LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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Shell rS. 3 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 



pehool Gcarden. 



SCHWAB. 



THE 



SCHOOL GARDEN 



BEING 



A PRACTICAL CONTRIBUTION TO THE 
SUBJECT OF EDUCATION. 



BY 



PROF. ERASMUS SCHWAB, 

DIRECTOR OF THE MILITARY COLLEGE OF VIENNA. 




TRANSLATED FROM THE FOURTH GERMAN EDITION BY 

MRS. HORACE MANN. 



c, 1879. o^. 

NEW YORK: 
M. L. HOLBROOK & CO. 

1879. 



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Copyright. 

By M. L. HOLBROOK. 

1879- 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 



The " School Gardens," by Dr. Schwab, is a little 
book that seems to come most opportunely to this coun- 
try, just as the minds of educators are at work upon 
the problem of industrial education for the young. In- 
dustrial education for the adult is quite another matter, 
and yet its foundations should be laid earlier. Work- 
shops of all sorts are gradually being established, in 
which various branches of industry may be learned 
after children leave the grammar school and high 
school ; but the aim of the school garden is to make 
the young /ove industrial work — for what we love we do — 
and there is no introduction to such occupations so 
charming as the culture of flowers. Thousands of 
school gardens are in operation in Austria to-day, to 
say nothing of other places, as the fruit of Dr. Schwab's 
fertile and comprehensive brain. In preparing this work 
for the American public, certain adaptations will have 
to be made to our different institutions of society, and 
our different plants and birds ; for it is designed for a 
manual as well as for an exhaustive essay upon the sub- 
ject, in which light it is of world-wide application. Dr. 
Schwab's own animated words are best for the general 
consideration of the subject, and the reader will easily 
see where they do not apply in practice. 

Mrs. Horace Mann. 

(3) 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



In the autumn of 1866, the citizens of Olmutz began 
to lay out a large park on a plan which I had pointed 
out to the Stadtverordereten-Collegium, as a compensa- 
tion for the destruction of the public walks by the war. 
The lively public interest shown in the movement 
awakened in me, then a member of the Committee for 
City Improvements, the desire to plant trees and culti- 
vate flowers, and the endeavor to lead others to share 
in that pleasure. It called out in me many trains of 
thought, which, according to one of my nature, were 
destined sooner or later to become acts. 

In the year 1870, I was appointed inspector of the 
German public schools in the Circle of Olmutz. The 
excellent new school-law of 1869 decreed that with 
every country school should be connected an experi- 
mental garden, which in another part of the law was 
called an experimental field (Versuchsf eld) . This word 
was such an unlucky one, so general and yet so narrow, 
and therefore vague, that a full year passed after the ap- 
pearance of the law before it was understood or carried 
into operation. Although an idealist through and through, 
I was used to results in life, and it delighted me to set at 
work my little modicum of organizing talent. Two points 

(5) 



PREFACE. 



were clear to me : first, that no peasant would allow his 
son to undertake such a foolish experiment in the public 
school as to learn to cultivate a field with plough and 
mattock ! In the second place, I recognized more and 
more every day what I instinctively felt on first reading 
the law : that there should be, not only for every country 
school but for every city school, a pleasure-ground ; per 
haps still more for the latter than for the former. 

WHY I WAS INTERESTED. 

I was inspecting one day the school of the little vil- 
lage of Redweis, near Olmutz. The region around it 
is a fruitful plain, a portion of the well-known Hanna ; 
but far and wide*I saw that, with the exception of the 
fruit trees of the house garden, there was neither tree 
nor shrub ; only a few trees in the streets, in a few 
places. I pitied the children of a village, to whom the 
contemplation of nature is so circumscribed by the pov- 
erty of animal and plant life. As I looked out of 
the school-room window, I saw, outside of the teacher's 
garden, only a wide, waste piece. The thought imme- 
diately took root in me, " here belongs a school gar- 
den ! " And with this word I had found the key to 
what I was seeking. On my way home the idea of what 
this school garden must be was clear. I went imme- 
diately to the manufacturer, Herr Max Machanek, who 
possesses a happy talent for landscape gardening, 
which he had made known by his good plan for the city 
park in Olmutz, and with whom I had been visiting 
gardens since the year 1866. For, I thought the plan 
must not only be a good one, it must be beautiful. I 
developed to the gifted man my thoughts about the dif- 
ferent kinds of school gardens which had flashed 



PREFACE. 7 

through my head like lightning. And now we went to 
work. In eight days this pamphlet of mine was writ- 
ten, which I called " The Public School Garden ; " for 
at that time I did not dare to express aloud that I was 
thinking of gardens for all kinds of schools. In eight 
days, Herr Machanek had also three plans ready, one 
for Redweis, and two ideal ones for villages, and also 
for small cities. 

The pamphlet made a kind of epoch in Austria. 
People were charmed with the text, and transported 
with the colored pictures which, at the expense of Herr 
Machanek, brought out so beautifully, clearly and loving- 
ly, the idea of the school garden suited to time and 
place. The public reproached both gardeners for having 
dared to surround nurseries and beds for field produce 
with neat borders, i. e.^ with curved lines ! As to the 
rest, they were pleased that the plans, putting to shame 
the time-honored stiff symmetry of straight lines, and 
avoiding the taste of modern gardening, had an easy 
grace and an agreeable harmony. Thus the little pam- 
phlet, plainly the birth of a moment, awakened in geo- 
metrical progression the interest of the public for the 
founding of school gardens. 

Tolerably useful school gardens there certainly were 
here and there in Germany as well as in Austria, before 
the appearance of the first edition of this pamphlet ; but 
they found no imitators, so that they brought no results 
except to the person of the teacher. No wonder that 
many of them soon relapsed into a wilderness and at- 
tracted no attention I 

But whence this sad experience ? On the one side 
it may be explained by the indifference of the general 
public, and the apparent want of means for a proper lay- 



3 PREFACE. 

ing out of the gardens, and to the opposition of many 
communities to any new enterprise, but chiefly to the 
miserable lack of instruction in the training schools of 
teachers, which again points back still farther to the 
miserable lack of earlier school legislation. 

On another side, it cannot be overlooked that even in 
the latest times there was no clear conception of the 
school garden on German ground in anybody's head, 
so that no one could come forward with any striking 
propositions which would interest experts or persuade 
communities to offer the place and the means to lay out 
such gardens in reference to local needs, or demand 
from the teachers the capacity to deduce them from the 
actual means of instruction and education, without dis- 
turbing the corporate organism of the public schools 
(volksschulen). 

Whoever wishes to make plans for founding suitable 
school gardens must certainly be an idealist and have a 
heart for the people ; but he must also possess the neces- 
sary technical knowledge required ; he must know life, 
and be acquainted with the public demands by his own 
inward observations and insight ; he must have had in- 
tercourse with all classes of the population, and must 
especially be acquainted with teachers, and be himself 
a school man, in order to be able to meet the question 
whether his plans can reckon upon general sympathy 
and furtherance. When the author endeavors five years 
after the first appearance of his pamphlet to give him- 
self an account of his success, whereby he, setting aside 
his individual views, has won the general confidence in 
the correctness and practicability of his plans, he finds 
that a concatenation of circumstances has enabled him 
to solve such a problem. His studies had the ideal and 



PREFACE. 9 

also the real life for their subject — an active profession 
has made him specially acquainted with many peoples 
and countries, and had tempted him, in some sort, to 
speak with authority. 

In Germany and other places, the author, on account 
of this work, has often been greeted as a hopeful pupil 
of Froebel, and passes for one still by most people. I 
have often related that I came naturally, as it were, by 
my idea of the school garden, and have freely confessed 
that five years ago I knew little of Froebel. Since that 
time I have certainly been much interested in him who, 
before my time, had wished for a school garden ; but 
before me no one had had the good fortune to make a 
propaganda for his plans with any result ; then — were 
there any school gardens outside of German ground ? 

The " Public School Gardens " of the author under- 
takes to give the outlines according to which country 
and city school gardens should be laid out. According 
to the judgment of school-men, naturalists and men of 
practical life, not an idea in this pamphlet should be 
neglected which can be brought to life by the school 
garden. 

WHAT IS NECESSARY, AND WHO FAVOR IT. 

It is very striking that the school garden, as it is called 
to-day, repeatedly emphasizes the fact that not all the 
plans are everywhere practicable ; that the necessary 
and suitable ones are chosen with tact and understand- 
ing j but as to the rest, especially where there is no 
money to be had for the purpose, it must be given up. 

According to the advice of the inspector of the court 
garden, Jager, in Eisenach, from whom I have learned 
much, it is best that the garden land (grabe land) be 



lO 



PREFACE. 



separated from the other garden. Nursery, experimental 
garden and vegetable garden may be laid out in recti- 
linear beds, but masked with shrubbery ; the other gar- 
den should, at least in cities, take more of a landscape 
character. 

The expense, if the ground is a level one, may be only 
fifty florins ; it may be five hundred, indeed, a thousand 
or more if one is not afraid of the cost. The best argu- 
ment for meeting the expense is the numerous school 
gardens, which, according to the ideas laid down in 
this pamphlet, were newly planned or wholly transformed. 
The idea of the school garden is a great one in its bear- 
ing upon instruction and education ; but it is also a 
fitting and unanswerable one. That national econo- 
mists and scientifically cultivated land-owners promise 
the school garden a great future ; that naturalists, that 
medical writers welcome this idea gladly, was apparent 
from the beginning. Also prominent pedagogues sym- 
pathized with the proposals of the author immediately 
and unconditionally. Letters from the most various 
portions of Austria and Germany, and from Italy and 
England, express cordial interest. The periodical and 
daily press have been equally favorable. 

This unanimous support of sober and of enthusiastic, 
and also of experienced men in all conditions of life, 
was also shared by the unprejudiced circles in Austria. 
The Ministry of Instruction in Hungary, all the school 
inspectors and normal institutions, have taken part in 
the public school garden, and given it their earnest 
furtherance. The Royal Imperial Ministry of Agricul- 
ture have sent my pamphlet to all their agricultural so- 
cieties and teachers' institutes, with an invitation to 
notice it in their ofiicial documents. Thereupon the K. 



PREFACE. II 

K. (or Royal Imperial) Ministry of Instruction received 
" The School Garden " for the teachers' library of the 
public schools, and required of the normal schools the 
adoption of the practical hints given in the pamphlet. 
In 1875, the Ministry of Agriculture required the ad- 
ministrators of public property, public foresters, and the 
specially rich Greek Oriental Religious Fund in Buko- 
wina, to further the founding of school gardens, which 
requisition already bears fruit. The K. K. Ministry of 
Instruction has repeatedly granted money to the State 
Institutions in favor of school gardens. The Ministry 
of the Interior has also made the K. K. governments 
cognizant of the bearing upon the welfare of the people 
and the country of the systematic founding of school 
gardens as explained by the author. 

The agitation for the popular idea of the school garden 
in Austria has a wide field before it, but the prospect is 
very favorable. The class of noble landed proprietors 
has been gained over in most places. For example, the 
business agent of his highness Duke Albrecht has prom- 
ised his co-operation in the founding of school gardens 
upon the numerous domains of this imperial prince, as 
soon as the teachers show a corresponding ability to do 
it. In Galicia a very energetic district magistrate has 
excited the activity of the nobility in his district in a 
very decided manner. The K. K. Society of Husband- 
men in Vienna is ready to promote the interests of 
school gardens in Lower Austria. 

When the normal school of Austria and Hungary 
shall earnestly, with insight and circumspection, pro- 
mote the action of the highest boards of instruction, the 
most important and most indispensable step will have 
been taken to make the school garden, with all the bless- 



12 



PREFACE. 



ings it will bring, the common property of the people 
everywhere. The Austrian Board of Instruction, in 
fact, already admits the laying out of suitable school 
gardens in several normal school institutions, and the 
i)iet of Lower Austria, by planting school gardens in the 
pro-seminaries it has erected with so many sacrifices in 
Vienna, Neustadt and St. Potten, has given a striking 
example of its comprehension of the idea. But real 
life already hastens the general founding of school gar- 
dens in the normal school institutions. In K. K. Sile- 
sia, the Moravian-Silesian Congress of Silk Culture agi- 
tated the subject in a striking manner by means of a 
hand-bill, giving one of my original plans for small 
country school gardens, and the K. K. Country School 
Council showed itself as active as it was intelligent. In 
other countries the practical result of my pamphlet soon 
manifested itself in the creation of single school gardens. 

The Vienna Exposition of 1873 made an epoch for 
school gardens. The Austrian model school, in whose 
origin and prosecution the author took an active part, 
was visited by thousands from all countries, and since 
this object had the good fortune to excite quite unusual 
practical results, the subject did not fail of its influence. 
It pleased numerous friends of schools, and its general dif- 
fusion can no longer be a question of any thing but time. 

The Country School Counsellor of the Moravians 
then interested himself in the general diffusion of the 
school gardens. He demanded the help of the K. K. 
District School Counsellor, and expressly the State 
School Counsellor, for their co-operation ; he sought 
out the Agricultural Society and its sections, and affili- 
ated meetings, for their active support of the measure ; 
and, in short, he allowed the plans I had published in 



PREFACE. 



13 



the two first editions of my pamphlet to be quadrupled 
and spread about. Other country school counsellors 
showed themselves friendly to the idea, although in a 
less energetic manner. 

GARDENS ESTABLISHED. 

Of the school gardens laid out in the spring of 1874, 
three deserve special mention. That of the Thomas 
School, in the Neugasse at Brunn is one, because it proves 
that room for a school garden can be found in a large 
city j a second, in the same city, is added to the orphan 
house for boys ; and in Vienna, there is one in con- 
nection with the training deaf and dumb institution. 
Both the last are noteworthy, because their aim is to 
create means of instruction and education for unfor- 
tunate children and those deprived of some of their 
senses. In 1875 the founding of the school garden in 
the K. K. German Normal School was a specially im- 
portant measure. 

The Society of Public Ciilture will have a school gar- 
den in the most beautiful Alpine regions of Austria. It 
brought its influence to bear upon the population by a 
circular which I prepared for them with great pleasure. 

FURTHER ENCOURAGEMENT. 

That the little pamphlet appeared in its second edition 
at the Vienna Exposition, and that a fourth is now called 
for, and that the author has received invitations from 
foreign countries to pronounce discourses upon the sub- 
ject, is a proof that at present everywhere the school 
garden is recognized as the most important foundation 
of society, and that a good thought, advocated with per- 
severance, has not to wait long for general co-operation. 



14 PREFACE. 

The idea of a school garden is already so obviously 
an acceptable one, that the title of the pamphlet was 
changed in the third edition from " Public School Gar- 
den " to " School Garden." For, it belongs not merely 
to every public school, but to every school — for the deaf- 
mutes, for the feeble-minded, for orphans ; to every 
polytechnic school (real schule), to every gymnasium 
and every normal school. A specially neat, well-con- 
sidered garden belongs also to every kindergarten. 

School boards will not perhaps everywhere include a 
garden in a kindergarten, but so much the more should 
they do so in the public school. In reference to this, the 
conduct of the K. K. Silesian Board is noteworthy. The 
School Counsellor recommended the erection of school 
gardens in a printed document. At present. Diet, Min- 
istry of Agriculture, and Department of Instruction, 
have granted supplies to every teacher who takes agri- 
cultural instruction. These courses of instruction are 
inspired by local school inspectors, by district school 
inspectors, and by the votaries of the Agricultural 
Union, who are appointed by the local school inspector. 
These last men belong mostly to the class of stewards 
of landed estates, foresters, proprietors, in short of 
practical country owners. In the inspection, school 
gardens are specially considered. If a teacher has not 
put his school garden into good order, he receives no 
subsidy. 

So long as teachers who have not received instruction 
upon this subject in their training schools, work in 
a theoretic, practical way, so long it is recommended, 
as in Austria, to make them adepts in the matter in 
the autumn session of the Union. But an adequate 
course of agricultural instruction for teachers, and agri- 



PREFACE. 



15 



cultural instruction for school children, cannot be thought 
of without a school garden. In that course given by 
the Agricultural Ministry, on which the subsidy is de- 
pendent, which is held by the indefatigable Director 
Janovsky, in the six weeks autumnal session of the 
Union for Silesian public school teachers in the Agri- 
cultural Institute at Oberheimsdorf, the founding of 
public school gardens is made a very prominent feature. 
In Barrzdorf, half an hour's distance from Oberheims- 
dorf, the teachers have an opportunity to see a little 
model school garden. Besides this, Mr. F. Janovsky has 
already explained how to work out a plan for every 
school garden in every community of the land, free of 
expense. The District School Inspectors are also full 
of zeal, and as soon as they find anywhere, even a par- 
tially suitable place which the community will give for 
a school garden, they send the sketch of the place to 
Director Janovsky. 

IN SWEDEN AND FRANCE. 

If the question is at last started whether school gar- 
dens already exist in other countries, it must be answered 
that they exist in Sweden, which to-day numbers two 
thousand of them. The author first learned this fact in 
187 1, and in 1873 had an opportunity, as official report- 
er of the Exposition on the subject of public schools, to 
look at the Swedish plans. The Swedish school admin- 
istration is very sound, and the schools are in a high 
state of development. She has already gone so far in 
the establishment of school gardens, that she has printed 
directions which enumerate the plants to be used in 
them, and gives the proper explanations. On that ac- 
count, the system is a little one-sided, as their gardens 



1 6 PREFACE, 



are only established for the country schools, and serve 
only to spread agricultural instruction. I shall, there- 
fore, show in the proper place, that a great Swedish 
school garden contains less means of culture than a 
small one on the Schwab system, as it is called in Austria. 
It must, however, be granted that Sweden is already be- 
ginning to share in such fruits as I wish to show are the 
after results of the school gardens upon life everywhere. 
Sweden had a painful experience in the beginning of 
the enterprise, as the teachers of that time were not 
taught in their seminaries how to carry them on. Nothing 
now stands in the way of their universal spread in Sweden. 

At the Vienna Exposition in 1873, the author saw 
the magnificent garden-plans which have beautified so 
many normal institutes in France. He was assured by 
a very cultivated French school inspector that France 
already has many school gardens. I acknowledge that 
I was not previously in a position to know any thing spe- 
cial about school gardens in France ; for my residence 
in Paris was before I issued this pamphlet. The French, 
with their taste and their peculiar talents for gardening 
of all kinds, have also the gift of contributing a rich 
share to the formation of the idea of the school gardens. 

The school garden needs to-day in every country only 
some advocates of intellect and organizing talent to be 
before the end of the century participated in by the 
commonwealth of European nations. In my view it is 
nothing but a not yet recognized, yet precious inheri- 
tance of the eighteenth century. 

In Austria the idea of the school garden has already 
become so popular that in building new school-houses 
the rule now is to appropriate one room for the future 
school garden. 



THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 



CHAPTER I. 

" Nature is our home ; to be a stranger in it brings loss and disgrace to us." 
A SCHOOL GARDEN TO EVERY SCHOOL. 

The degree of carefulness which a community applies 
to the education of youth, and consequently to its pub- 
lic schools, is the surest measure of the moral and spir- 
itual standpoint and the political ripeness of the people. 
The teacher's ability and -independence, as well as his 
favorable, material and social position, is a security for 
public prosperity, culture and freedom. The public 
school, as the planting ground of the welfare of the na- 
tion, must therefore be the darling of the community. 
That it is already so where the task of the school has 
been recognized by the people, is expressed by the 
school building itself. In every village where it is the 
pride of the villagers, it is the most beautiful and con- 
venient house in it. 

The school house, like the church, must be a " sa- 
cred " place ; but it can only be so when it has a suita- 
ble location and surroundings. It should have am 
agreeable, well-cared for approach, a worthy exterior 



l8 THE SCHOOL GARDEN 

and a convenient interior united ; and when space and 
neatness, and an abundance of light and air are added, 
it will be made the dearest resort of youth. 

Great and difficult in our day is the task of the public 
school. The requisition is to educate well-instructed, 
thinking men ; minds prepared for the exigencies of 
life ; self-governing men, possessing sentiments of duty 
and honor, love of their fellow-men, and the power of 
self sacrifice — in short, characters useful to the com- 
munity. 

How can the school reach this ideal ? 

In the cities of Austria there is at present no child 
that does not enjoy high instruction, for eight long years, 
in from five to eight different classes. The teacher, 
since he has before him only children of the same age, 
can in this long period of time, if his classes are not 
overburdened with numbers, attend to the individual 
needs of each child ; and the child learns from such 
studies as natural philosophy and geography, so much 
for the uses of life that he must be incomparably far in 
advance of the child of the country regions. He then 
enters a burger schule. This has been the case with the 
majority of the children in tolerably large cities. So 
many cultivating and educating elements are offered 
them in the school, apart from positive branches of 
•knowledge, that the scholars far outstrip the country 
child in preparation for life by a greater intellectual 
maturity, capacity for acquisition, and self-reliance. In 
the city, a good teacher of the upper classes will take 
time to draw the attention of his pupils to the manifold 
occupations of men, accompanying them to the work- 
shops of the tradesmen and the halls of the manufac- 
turers. In his Wahrheit und Dichtung^ one may read 



PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL. i^ 

what Goethe learnt in his youth in this manner, and 
how much importance he assigned to this instruction by 
observation. 

PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL. 

What compensation can the country school offer to 
the village child for the lack of the manifold incentives 
which the fortun-ate child of the city finds in family and 
school, and in the many-sided influences of city circum- 
stances ? The goal of education is certainly the same 
for the city and the country school in all essentials. But 
how different in reality is the shaping of the knowledge 
and capacity acquired by the one or the other, as to 
choice, measure and treatment. This difference is un- 
avoidable, but it surely is necessary only in a certain 
degree. If it is apparent even in the double class 
school (schools with two teachers), how much more 
pronounced must it be in the school of one class, which 
is the rule in the country, in so many large districts. 
Here the instruction of the whole offspring of the com- 
munity, and not of one generation alone, rests upon the 
shoulders of one man. Ponder this thought, and one 
will be obliged to confess that this problem is one of 
the weightiest, most unanswerable and difficult to solve 
of our day."^ Since the education of the people even in 
cities can only be effected in the midst of an abundance 
of power and means of instruction and exciting influ- 
ences, by the concentration of great, well-organized ef- 
forts extending over years, the question arises : Is not 
every patriot, every friend of youth and man in duty 
bound to think what are the means by which the public 
school, whether in city or country, shall reach its goal 

— *»This difference does not exist in America. — Tr. 

4}\ dU^/b 



20 THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 

of broadening the culture of the people in a manner 
worthy of human destiny ? 

There is a key to the solution of this problem, and it 
is found essentially in a just estimate of the value of in- 
struction in natural science. Rossmiissler expresses him- 
self thus : " Mother Earth, with her materials, powers, 
phenomena and forms of life is to us what we call na- 
ture. This nature is our home, to be a stranger to 
which brings disgrace and injury to us all. In this con- 
ception, nature is the ground-work of human culture and 
morals. In these words, in my view, lies the central 
point of human instruction." 

The shortest, nearest path to this goal is the estab- 
lishment of school gardens suited to time and place. In 
the school garden may be comprised far more than half 
of the instruction in natural history and science, and 
specially an essential part of the science of the home re- 
gion. Here and there good school gardens are found 
in which this or that department of natural history has 
been taught with more or less skill, and which have 
served to diffuse many useful and good thoughts. But 
school gardens which seek to flow in all directions into 
a unified, well thought out, consecutively progressive 
whole, with a plan and purpose (all that is good and 
much that is excellent that is found scattered here and 
there without reference to a greater sphere), were set in 
motion by the two first editions of the '' Volksschulgar- 
ten^^ and by the Austrian model school in the Exposi- 
tion of 1873. 

School gardens must certainly always take into view 
first the manifold circumstanced ; but they can only solve 
the pending problems to the thinkers when they follow 
out not merely single points of view, but. starting from 



OUR DEPENDENCE ON NA TURE. 2 1 

a verified, clear, sound and great thought, set their aim 
only so high as appears to be attainable in a human 
way. 

The reason why hitherto few endeavors have been 
made to impart to the people, and especially to the in- 
habitants of country regions, the magnificent acquisi- 
tions of natural science, are, first, that the importance 
of such knowledge to the people has not been suffi- 
ciently recognized ; secondly, that the teaching material 
for this instruction has not been properly prepared ; 
thirdly, that the means for personal obser\'ation have 
been wanting. 

OUR DEPENDENCE ON NATURE. 

But the recognition is making its way that the knowl- 
edge of the powers of nature, of its manifestations and 
its elements, is in a high degree desirable for the so- 
called common man, since, upon the right use of the 
elements of nature depends the welfare of the whole 
people. Much has been done also to popularize natural 
history in the last decade. Bock's excellent popular 
work, " Structure, Life and Care of the Human Body, " 
covers the ground of the school wherever the German 
lansruasre is taught ; and German acuteness and the 
German facult}^ of teaching have already produced many 
valuable means of instruction, but, 

" The forward glance to tasks as yet tinwon. 
Obscures from view the little man has done." 

Yet the importance of instruction in natural histor}% so 
far as it shall benefit the man of the country regions, is 
viewed, at first, only from the standpoint of its utility, 
and thus far, very one-sidedly. One-sidedly, in so far 
as this knowledge is declared to be merely useful, not 



22 THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 



as absolutely necessary to him whose existence is bound 
to nature by a thousand inseparable bonds. He is, in- 
deed, dependent upon it in all and every thing, over 
which he is to be master in many points, and upon 
which his activity is to be directed. For while nature 
must be his friend, and an open book for counsel, in- 
struction and warning, it to-day is in fact locked up 
from him by seven seals. 

But the knowledge of the natural sciences is to the 
man of the country regions, not only necessary for fu- 
ture practical value, and as a point of union for later 
progress in useful knowledge, but it may and must serve 
him precisely as the groundwork of a universal human 
culture. And here we stand before one of the weighti- 
est problems of the modern school garden, before the 
known systematic use of the educating element that lies 
in the natural sciences, for which, so far as it concerns 
the education of the masses, the magic wand is to be 
found in no other way. 

THE GARDEN SCHOOL A PLACE TO BE HAPPY. 

That this use of natural history for educational pur- 
poses may and must be begun in school gardens, it is 
the design of the following pages to show. A proper 
school garden may, must, and is destined to be the 
place where children are happiest ; it must be the dear- 
est spot in those hours which they do not spend in the 
school room or occupy at home in work for the school. 
To be shut out from the instruction and plays of the 
school garden will necessarily be one of the most pain- 
ful punishments to the child. The school room (and 
also the little school workshop) and the school garden 
are to be the whole world of the child when this is not 



ESTHETIC RESULTS. 23 

furnished by family life ; I mean the world of feeling 
and intellect, the world of his thoughts, of his childish 
strivings, of his dreams of future activity. The eye and 
heart of the child shall open here to the beauty of na- 
ture, from the lowest steps of learning, and at the ten- 
derest age ; the attention will be first powerfully excited 
and fastened here ; the sense of order, purity and neat- 
ness, the sense of poetical harmony, and the intuition 
of beauty must here fall, fertilizing, upon the young soft 
soul. Here the interest in the manifestations, charms, 
and treasures of home nature may be awakened, in- 
creased and refined ; and here the cherishing and spir- 
itual power of insight can be reached. The pleasure of 
observing carefully and quietly must be sharpened, in 
order that the child may reflect upon what is seen, that 
he may find the connection between effect and cause ; 
and here the faculty of sifting and rearranging the man- 
ifold forms and changing appearances of nature, will be 
cultivated. But clearness of representation is the first 
condition for the intellectual work of human life. The 
school garden will be peculiarly a school of correct and 
specific judgment, of circumspect reflection, a fountain 
of the purest and most innocent joys of children and 
youth, — a communion with nature. 

ESTHETIC RESULTS. 

Can these educating results cease during life } Must 
not all the children so trained remain friends of the trees 
and the flowers they loved ; and, therefore, will they not 
be the friends of nature, and on the way to be good men ? 
Will not the destroyer of trees and the tormentor of 
animals cease in the earth ? Will not the life-long effects 
of the pleasures enjoyed in the beauty of creation, and 



24 



THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 



in the improvement gained in the school garden, express 
themselves in the character ? Surely a new race will 
thus issue from the schools, a race which will not look 
upon the earth as a vale of tears, but as a place worthy 
of human industry, a beloved, habitable home, in which 
the man of clear mind and joyous heart shall strive and 
work for his own and his neighbor's happiness. 

Will not intellectual minds and moral qualities be 
developed delightfully by rational school gardens ? The 
groundwork of all civil (and human) virtues is the com- 
mufiity. Heretofore the man from the country has enjoyed 
less of .the feeling of community than the inhabitant of 
the city, which is not wonderful, since the city is the 
home of intellectual and moral culture. But where could 
the germs of community be planted more securely and vig- 
orously than in the school garden ? There is found not 
only the common learning of the school, but common 
work, common pleasure, and common play. By excit- 
ing the sense of the community the school garden helps 
essentially to solve the problem of the people's educa- 
tion. The feeling of inter-dependence will lead to 
common action with the neighbor, to companionships 
and friendships for life, laying the foundations of truly 
brotherly relations among the frequenters of the school. 
When once the men in a community shall have more 
pleasing and worthy recollections of their common youth 
than the dancing floor and the parade ground — not 
rarely the only recollections they now have in common 
— when they shall think of the sisterly relations, so to 
speak, in the school, even of its exciting emulations, — 
then a public spirit will be kindled and take root. The 
clear perception that the community is a great family 
with an inseparable bond of union, does not proceed so 



A PROBLEM SOLVED. 25 

much from the school room as it will from the school 
garden, where intercourse is unrestrained, and which 
can be seized and felt by the soul of the child in 
all its depths. These school gardens should belong 
also to orphan asylums and to those schools which 
children frequent who are not yet of an age to attend 
the manufacturers' schools ; they will be under the care 
of the wife of the teacher, who can also take charge 
of the instruction of the little girls in womanly occu- 
pations, when once the school garden has the neces- 
sary enlargement for this purpose. A good school 
garden will also offer for the instruction, by observation, 
of little children, the richest and best material, and give 
them an opportunity to become acquainted with the 
plant world for common and practical purposes. It 
will destroy superstition in the people, battle with quack- 
ery, help to banish improvidence, cultivate love of na- 
ture and confidence in her teach ingfs. 

A PROBLEM OF EDTJCATION SOLVED. 

A judicious and well planned school garden will 
surely solve an essential part of the problem of the peo- 
ple's education, and help to educate an intelligent and 
circumspect working power, which, accustomed to ask 
the what the how and the why upon every subject, will 
cultivate a correct judgment upon those things and rela- 
tions in life with which they have to do. It will culti- 
vate also reflective and active natures, from whom sul- 
lenness and indolence stand aloof, who have made their 
own a powerful and persevering will, because they have 
learned thoroughly by their little labors in the school 
garden to do in an orderly and capable manner what- 
ever they have to do. 



26 THE SCHOOL GARDEN: 

The school garden will not only take care of the gen- 
eral education of the children ; but will do duty on 
other points, for scientific instruction forms only a part 
of the instruction of the people. A lively moral feeling 
and a sound religious direction are impressed by it upon 
the youth, and thus the public school may turn out a 
race so virtuous, brave and thrifty through indepen- 
dence, as it would be difficult to produce without the 
help of so beneficent an aid to progress as a good school 
garden. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE SCHOOL GARDEN A PART OF THE SCIENCE OF HOME 
AND NATURE. 

No one who knows the world and men will fail to see 
that these incitements which are destined to determine 
the activity of men for their whole lifetime, are the most 
effectual for individuals as well as for the whole race, 
if they are brought to bear upon the naive, freshly re- 
ceptive age of from six to fourteen years. The under- 
standing seizes them in play, the fancy receives them 
gladly as material and nourishment for future activity ; 
enjoyment soon lays the foundation for persistent pur- 
suit and love Of them, and for future salutary use of them. 
The lasting influence of such youthful impressions re- 
ceived under judicious guidance and in the right way, 
is incalculable. 

No intelligent man would make an agricultural school 
out of the village school, and thereby deprive the public 
school of its peculiar character ; but is it rare for men 
to feel that they have not estimated highly enough the 
incentives received in early youth for industrial and 
technical activity ? In love of art and science, and 
all the means of acquiring a reasonable degree of the 

(27) 



28 THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 

power to cultivate the earth, and the activities and call- 
ings connected with it they feel a deficiency where the 
country child is early led to think and to prepare for 
his future life occupation. Let us here ponder upon 
the saying, Non scholce sed vitce. / Not for the school, 
but for life ! 

Ignorance, prejudice and imperfect action have for 
centuries inflicted wounds upon agriculture. In all 
lands the power of custom and of inherited privilege 
falls heavily upon the rural population. Whence shall 
come help and salvation ? In order to enlighten and 
cultivate this rural population, the elements of agricul- 
tural instruction must, within certain wise limits, be 
brought into the public school. Well directed schools, 
but before all things a correctly arranged, progressive 
course of agricultural instruction, will make the small 
landholder and the rural workman capable of profiting 
by good popular agricultural books. This improvement 
will cost little, and country towns and State will will- 
ingly defray the expense. 

The country public school can bring in this elementary 
knowledge without neglecting aims of its own, elsewhere 
recognized in this essay, but it must do this if the State 
comprehends rightly the interests of its tax-payers. 
Even the smallest village school can solve this problem, 
and at surprisingly little cost. 

WHAT AN EXPERIMENT GARDEN DOES. 

The country school already, by law, contains a portion 
of the school garden, the little " experiment garden for 
boys." This experiment garden has in general a three- 
fold aim. It serves in the first place for the cultivation 
of useful plants of all kinds — cereals, and economic 



AN EXPERIMEE T GARDEN. 2 9 

plants, fodder plants, leguminons and hoe-plants, also 
the different commercial plants ; secondly, for elemen- 
tary exemplification of the progress in husbandry ; for 
instance, making beds of a few square meters in circum- 
ference, and for the diffusion of the knowledge of physics 
and chemistry so indispensable to the husbandman. 
The " experiment " garden serves the younger children 
for personal observation and ratification of what is com- 
municated to them by instruction, and also for the bene- 
fit of outsiders who come to listen to the progressive 
course of agricultural instruction. It would be very 
short-sighted to found an insufficient, ordinary agricul- 
tural school for the small farmers and day laborers, and 
leave the mass of the country people unprovided for. 

If the public-school teacher does not possess suf- 
ficient knowledge to furnish the progressive course of 
agricultural instruction, the school garden can take in 
an itinerant agricultural teacher as a guest, and the town 
shall thus save the money which a special garden for 
this purpose would cost.* To this " experiment gar- 
den " for boys also belongs, in the agricultural depart- 
ment of the school garden, a kitchen garden, an experi- 
ment garden for girls, and a nursery for trees. 

If there is sufficient space near the school, let the 
school garden be joined to the school. This is very 
desirable. If the space is too small for that, the parish 
can give some waste spot in its territory, — and there are 
enough such places in the mountainous regions, — which 
should be near the school if possible. Or it may be- 
stow a little piece of land for this purpose in the neigh- 
borhood of the village. This piece of ground must of 

* It is the custom for "wanderers," or itinerant studsnts, to travel about for a 
year after they have completed studies in Germany, in order to gain experience. 



30 THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 

course he hedged in safely in order to be guarded 
against injury. The seeds required can be purchased 
by several united parishes, and if necessary by a whole 
district (Bezirke), so that each parish will have to con- 
tribute but a few kreutzers. In many, probably in most 
cases, the seeds and plants will be given by public- 
spirited men and societies, or by other school gardens. 
Thus, in a surprisingly short time many new, useful plants 
will be contributed and acclimated, whose domestica- 
tion would otherwise be difficult and perhaps impossible, 
unless some large landed proprietor in the neighborhood 
makes a beginning. New kinds of cereals, maize, saf- 
fron, potatoes, hops, the different kinds of table pump- 
kins so little estimated at their true value, clover (in 
Hungary), and a series of technical and economical and 
commercial plants can thus be introduced into many 
places with little trouble and little cost. Although the 
more important commercial plants, (that is, medicinal 
plants,) and those that yield oil, colors, spinning material 
and roots, give a specially good revenue, the difficulty 
of their introduction has stood in the way of their gen- 
eral spread, while the consequently little revenue they 
have brought under these circumstances has led to the 
abandonment of the endeavor after a few trials. 

THE MICROSCOPE AS AN AID. 

The microscope, which naturally comes into the ser- 
vice of the public school, will do its part to teach the 
pupils how to know many dangerous diseases that assail 
cultivated plants, such as wheat, potatoes, etc., and will 
make known many scarcely visible insects that are the 
enemies of agriciflture and must be fought. 



SOME ADVANTAGES. 



31 



The improvement of former methods of husbandry 
■will go hand in hand in the rising generation, with the 
introduction of new cultivated plants and their proper 
handling in the school garden ; much injurious routine 
work inherited from the forefathers will fall into disuse ; 
many wholesome innovations will make their way, and 
formerly despised or carelessly rejected material will be 
duly estimated. In many countries esteemed for their 
husbandry, the cow manure which is allowed to run to 
waste and to poison the air in so many of our villages, 
is made good use of. All kinds of manure must be pre- 
served in the school garden in as small a space as pos- 
sible, to be used by young and old for single plants. 
Its value is held, alas, very low in almost all parts of. 
Austrian Hungary. 

IMPROVEMENT OF THE SOIL. 

The ground soon will be made much better and more 
profitable if this matter of its dressing is attended to, 
than it now is in most places ; in the neighborhood of 
cities especially, the village will assume more and more 
the character of richly remunerative garden culture. 
Where garden culture already prevails, it will be ex- 
tended and improved, and in some places where at pres- 
ent it is supposed to be impossible, it will cover the 
present nakedness, as for instance in many a woodland 
or mountain village. Where early frosts make impos- 
sible the early transplanting of garden growths, the 
children of the school garden can be taught not to lay 
out their beloved hot-beds, but to use the much cheaper 
leaf-mould beds which do their duty much more surely, 
because, being set later in the year, they give out 
young plants suitable for the mountain regions at the 



32 THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 

proper time.* Children can be taught in winter to raise 
seeds in egg-shells and thumb pots to be planted out 
in spring at the right time. 

School gardens are the only places where improve- 
ments in the culture of the grape-vine by manuring, 
pruning and other treatment can be well introduced. 

FRUIT CULTURE. 

Very special care should be bestowed upon fruit cul- 
ture in the school gardens. This is as yet too little es- 
teemed as a source of agricultural prosperity. The 
school garden can further this interest by cultivating 
valuable fruits, raising them from seed and thus accli- 
mating foreign fruit, and making every region a fruit 
growing one. The school garden should provide a nurs- 
ery for trees cultivated from wild stock, and quinces, 
which improve greatly by good care ; it should also con- 
tain trellis fruit of all kinds. Where fruit culture is yet 
scarcely known, the husbandman should learn that a 
tree that can be bought for lo neugroschen will soon 

* Small boxes made of hard burned clay for covering plants are made without 
bottoms, and have a straight sloping roof, and an arrangement to hold the glass 
safely in its place. Their chief use is to protect the plants from the winter's cold. 
By the help of these, cauliflower, cabbage, savoy, salad and other kitchen plants, 
can be wintered, if, in the autumn, the boxes are placed in rows two feet apart in 
a protected place, and either seeded or planted, the spaces between the boxes 
filled with leaves or straw-manure, and protected on the glass side with covering, 
in severe frost. In the spring they can be used to protect tender plants that are 
then set out, against night frost, rough wind and beating rain, or to lay over veg- 
etables and flowering plants in the open field, and especially in gardens where 
there are no hot beds. Most vegetables do better in them than in hot-beds, be- 
cause in the latter plants are apt to be too much forced. They are particularly 
useful for cucumbers and melons when first growing. They may also be used in 
summer and autumn to bring forward the settings of woody plants, or to shade 
seeds from the heat of the sun, from drought, from snakes, birds or cats, which 
last trample down the beds. In winter they are useful for plants that it is hard 
to make grow, and that yet do not bear much moisture. They are easily handled. 
The glass can be partially removed to let in air, a little from the ground. 



FRUIT CULTURE. 33 

represent a capital of from 55 to 130 thalers, for a table- 
fruit tree easily gains yearly from 4 to 5 florins, and a 
nut-tree 10 florins. He should be made aware that 
many endeavors to raise fruit have failed hitherto 
only because the right kinds were not chosen, or small 
trees have been brought from good soil to worse, from 
warm regions to colder ones, from protected situations 
to exposed ones, etc. In short, failure has come be- 
cause essential mistakes were made in the beginning, 
or rational treatment was wanting, or other great er- 
rors were committed. When the great advantage 
which is to be reaped from fruit culture is once seen, 
and there is sound instruction given about the selec- 
tion and proper care of trees fitted to the soil and 
circumstances, fruit trees will be planted everywhere.* 
When this is the case, the home garden will be taken 
better care of, dwarf fruit trees will be found harm- 
less to other garden plants, and birds, the extermina- 
tors of injurious insects, will come to our gardens. t 
Soon mountain slopes and waste places will be culti- 
vated with fruit trees, farm fields will be surrounded 
with them, and streets, lanes, ridges, dams, the shores 
of brooks and the edges of ponds will be ornamented 
with them. Respect for the property of others will 
soon arise when all land proprietors cultivate fruit on 
their own premises. 

TREE PLANTING. 

Nor must school gardens forget to plant fore^ trees. 
Wherever the woods do not stand very near the school, 

* It is well to remember that while apple trees are devoured almost bodily by 
canker worms in Cambridge, the soil is specially adapted to pear trees, which the 
canker worms do not attack . — Tk. 

t Cats must be abolished in city gardens to ensure the visitation of birds. 

3 



34 



THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 



there should be at least one representative of our twenty- 
five or thirty kinds of trees in the school garden, and 
also a collection of our most important wild shrubs, if 
the wood does not actually look into the school win- 
dows. If it is not possible to plant trees near the 
school, one of the village streets can be planted with a 
row or an alley of trees ; but care should be taken that 
no two trees of the same kind stand together, as the ef- 
fect will not be picturesque. Many new trees will be 
introduced by means of the school gardens-^for exam- 
ple, the invaluable larch, the quickly growing ailanthus 
(God's tree), acacias and Scotch firs on the Hungarian 
steppes, etc. If the landed proprietors will learn some- 
thing of the care of forest trees, they will no longer strip 
the woods of their fallen leaves for litter for their cattle, 
nor tear away the roots from every fallen tree, for they 
will know that they are withdrawing the nourishment 
of the woodlands, which consists of the remains of the 
rotten and mouldered vegetation. The public school 
must implant in the children the love of trees, make 
clear to them what part the woods fulfil in the house- 
hold of nature, and of what importance they are to man. 
It must awaken in them the conviction that bad wood- 
husbandry is the ruin of agriculture, and that short-sight- 
edness for one or two harvests often turns a woodland 
into an unfruitful waste. 

One of the most important of the shrubs which are to 
be domesticated by the school garden is the willow ; 
particularly the fine willow that is used for basket mak- 
ing, which will furnish material for the school work-shop 
and create a lucrative branch of industry for adults. 
The culture of the willow is very simple, very profitable, 
and makes it possible to bring empty places, which oth- 



FRUIT CULTURE. 3^ 

erwise would be useless, to a good revenue, since a two 
or three year old willow-stock will earn from 270 to 310 
florins an acre under favorable circumstances. The 
valuable kinds of willow are well known to be suitable 
for industrial and agricultural purposes.* 

* Tlie chief forester, Geyer, in Karlshafen, on the Weser, uses the white wil- 
low and its varieties, the silver and gold willow, for margins of shores, hedges of 
meadows and shade for cattle pastures. The hurdle and basket manufactories 
use the purple and basket, or garden willow, with their varieties, the almond and 
spurge-laurel willows. Mountain scarps, moist and low-lying fields, and islands 
that are periodically submerged, are used for these growths. One morning in 
Hanover, Geyer counted 30,720 saplings, and reckoned an annual gross income 
of from S60 to $80 from a capital of about $19. Such plantations last from 18 to 
20 years. The rubbish from the peeling (rind and leaves) furnish when dried a 
good winter fodder for sheep and goats. The salix caspica affords very good 
osier twigs for binding, and grows in dry, clayey, sandy ground from six to eight 
feet high. This and salix viminalis are the best worth cultivating. In the for- 
est and on the shores of rivers, they now use in Prussia in great masses the oder- 
willow, particularly for binding together pine slabs two feet in width, which are 
placed one and one-half feet apart for pheasants' closes, for which they are pre- 
ferred before all other kinds. Willows of three years old are also used by coop- 
ers for hoop-staves, and those of two years old by basket makers. The soil for 
willows must be dug certainly one and one-half feet deep, and must be sandy 
ground, even gravelly, with clayey subsoil. In pure clay or loam or with moist 
subsoil they do not make those strong t.wigs. Ground free from weeds is neces- 
sary for willows. On the shore here (of the Danube) were gathered in the tree 
nursery well-rooted plants set a year ago ; but, in the forest, on the contrary, 
two year old wood was taken, which is the best for that place, since it is so easily 
rooted, and one year old wood does not give such strong plants and handsome 
twigs. 



CHAPTER II. 

A SCHOOL GARDEN A PART OF THE SCIENCE OF HOME 
AND NATURE. 

The school gardens will contain at least a few mul- 
berry trees wherever the raising of silk worms is possi- 
ble or called for. But it cannot be denied that the cul- 
tivation of fruit is the most desirable, and that this had 
better be well established before the silk culture is at- 
tempted. 

The school garden, while attending to what is neces- 
sary and useful, must be sure not to neglect what is 
beautiful and pleasant for the children, and must not 
fail to provide beautiful flowers by which the sense of 
color shall be awakened in them. The culture of flow- 
ers must be looked upon as instructive, educational and 
moral in its effect. Where the school garden is neces- 
sarily too small for other things, only flowers must be 
raised. The point to be aimed at is that the children 
shall love their work. ' . 

The incentive to gardening will be still more power- 
ful, if ornamental shrubs are included, which may be 
planted singly or united in a pretty shrubbery. Where 
there is water in a school garden, or very near it, inter- 
(36) 



ITS FLORA AND FAUNA. 37 

esting water-plants must not be forgotten. The influ- 
ence of the school garden will increase just in propor- 
tion as the knowledge of our home plants, and those 
that can be made home plants by being acclimated, is 
extended. 

And not merely the knowledge of the homeyf^r^, as 
far as it can be brought within the sphere of the school 
garden, but of a ' portion of our fauna — that is of the 
lower forms of animal life — should be kept in view. The 
garden and its surroundings give abundant opportunity 
for the knowledge and observation of the insect world 
and its interesting transformations. If it is possible to 
have a little basin in the garden, or if water is near at 
hand, there is open to the teacher a rich source of in- 
formation upon the remarkable lower insect world of 
the water. And as the flowers among plants, so stand 
the^ birds among animals, nearest to the heart of chil- 
dren. In large school gardens the thorn hedges afford 
protection to the singing birds, and hedges in the neigh- 
borhood must serve the purpose for the small school 
gardens. 

PRACTICAL OBJECT LESSONS. 

Not the school room but the school garden will spread 
correct views upon the subject of our animals. The 
future husbandman and gardener, and the future forester, 
will desire to know the friends and enemies which those 
denizens of meadow, field and wood as represented in 
the school garden, possess in the animal world. The 
hedgehog, for example, will be allowed to dwell undis- 
turbed in the garden ; the toad, at present purchased 
by the English gardeners, v/ill be allowed in the school 



38 



THE SCHOOL GARDEN: 



garden, if it can be kept from the beehives ; for it is 
otherwise harmless as well as useful. The bats will be 
spared ; even the buzzards and the owls will be secure 
as soon as the village youth know that we have only- 
two birds of prey, the hawk and the magpie. The birds 
will then find protection ; gentle hands will strew food 
for our singing birds during the winter, and the laws 
which aim to protect these friends of man will be re- 
spected. The destroyer of nests and the bird catcher 
will cease from among men. The singing of birds will 
enliven the earth and awaken agreeable and friendly 
feeling where it is now wanting. The titmouse, if un- 
molested, will increase incredibly, and many useful 
birds — starlings and jackdaws for instance — will be in- 
vited to domesticate themselves by little breeding-houses 
where they have been seen hitherto only as fleeting 
guests. Breeding houses for birds belong to school 
gardens as truly as salt does to bread, or a cup to the 
social meal.* The few examples mentioned which do 
not claim to be exhaustive in number, may suffice to 
show that the school garden can draw within the sphere 
of its direct and indirect activity a considerable part of 
the animal world of the home region. 

* It has been calculated that the blue titmouse daily consumes at least three-quar- 
ters of an ounce of butterfly's eggs, and that this amounts to between 15,000 and 
20,000 caterpillars. This little bird, then, destroys in one year six and a half mil- 
lions of such injurious insects ! Every pair of titmice brings up yearly from 
twenty-four to thirty-two young, arid if the nourishment of these last amounts to 
only half that of the old birds, it gives the consumption of the monstrous sum of 
twenty-four millions of injurious insects by a single family of tom-tits. A cuckoo 
destroys more than a hundred caterpillars in an hour ; a red-start about six hun- 
dred flies ; and innumerable such examples can be found. By the killing of one 
cuckoo, one titmouse, or one finch in the district inhabited by such a bird, as 
many pecks or other measure of injurious insects as correspond to its wants, will 
be let loose upon the vegetation. 



OPPORTUNITIES. 3^ 



A TASTE OF ANIMATED NATURE. 

But the school garden will often give an opportunity 
to introduce new animals whose breeding will be an 
advantage. In many places the raising of silk worms 
and of the oak-spinner (a spider) can be introduced. 
(Pastor Liha at Lukow, in Moravia, earned in 1869 not 
less than 800 florins by raising oak-spinners.) 

In many countries, and in many parts of all countries, 
a rich revenue may easily be gained by the raising of • 
bees. The bee industry has deteriorated in many 
countries where it formerly flourished — in the Zips of 
Hungary, for instance — and yet the demand for wax is 
such that much has to be imported into Austria. Sugar, 
which has supplanted honey for the table as a sweetener 
in all countries but Hungary, does not make so pleas- 
ant or so healthy an article of nourishment. The pre- 
judice of many countries in regard to the supposed 
impossibility of introducing bee culture, throws it spe- 
cially into school gardens.' Bee pasturage is by no 
means impossible by its limited culture on the plains, 
and it is even practicable in mountain regions, or in- 
deed not so difficult. Lindens, acacias, fruit trees, chest- 
nuts, will in future be cultivated in every village. For 
the fruitful plains grow maize, and the bee-nourishing 
clovers. For these, particularly the white clover, are 
abundant, and bring much revenue. Hazel bushes, nut 
trees, whortleberries, Norway maple, willows that stand 
half way in the water, sunflowers, which find so many 
uses and are such excellent disinfectants of unhealthy 
regions, offer fine bee pasturage, and one of the most 
striking but not well known fodder plants for bees (I 
mean mignonette), blooms the whole year round. Let 



40 



THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 



a beehive and a bee keeper (Bienenvater) be given to 
the best scholar, as they do in German Bohemia, and 
the certain propaganda is sure and rapid. 

t 

A GLIMPSE INTO MINERALOGY. 

The school garden, which is apparently only for the 
cultivation of plants, but which really offers muchma- 
terial for instruction in the animal kingdom, and illus- 
trates the interchanging relations between the vegetable 
and animal kingdoms, stands also in close relation to 
many parts of the mineral kingdom, which can have but 
limited attention in the public school. Since the in- 
struction in all branches must be brought into the most 
intimate relation with each other, it can also take into 
view the allied branches of natural science. Here par- 
ticularly comes in the agricultural science of the soil 
which treats of its composition, varieties, trial and im- 
provement. The ground principles of physics and 
chemistry belong to this instruction in natural history, 
and are quite comprehensible by the younger village 
children, but will be best understood when they find 
concrete application. The different branches of natural 
science taught in the practical garden of the boys may 
be indicated by various topics. The origin of the humus 
in the grouad by the decomposition of plants and of 
animal secretions and remains, whence are developed 
carbonic acid and ammonia ; the absorbing of the car- 
bonic acid from the moist soil by the roots of plants, 
and from the atmosphere by the pores (or lungs) of 
the leaves ; the decomposition of the carbonic acid by 
the green parts of the plant, under the influence of light, 
into pure carbon and oxygen ; the separation of these 



MINERALOGY. 41 



elements ; the mutual influence of the vegetable and ani- 
mal kingdoms ; the ammoniacal contents of the soil, the 
air and the rain water ; the absorption of nitrogen or 
azote from the atmosphere ; the absorption of mineral 
matter dissolved in the ground and in water ; the origin 
of these by mechanical and chemical solution ; the grad- 
ual impoverishment of the soil ; the enriching of the 
soil by letting it lie fallow, as by manuring it \ the 
nature and purpose of manure \ the illustration of the 
origin and processes of the nourishing and growth of 
plants ; the principles of plant culture ; seed and plant 
nurseries, etc. To the observations of the school gar- 
den belong elementary experiments in cultivating plants 
in water and in sand, together with experiments in the 
analysis of the nourishment, germination and multipli- 
cation of plants. Probably no one will deny that all 
this belongs to the instruction of a well arranged village 
school. 

Where, for example, can the function of the air in the 
economy of nature be better shown than in the open air, 
in nature, in the school garden ? Where could the im- 
portance of water, the ever present proteus-formed, all 
encompassing, all moving, all containing, and all shap- 
ing water, the element by whose existence the earth is 
what it is, by whose means plants and animals live, 
without which we could not exist or improve in cultiva- 
tion, — where can the importance of light and warmth be 
better explained than in the school garden .'* 

Outside of pedagogic reasons, the chief portion of 
the study of natural history falls to the share of the in- 
struction of the public school. Within this field the first 
place belongs to the most agreeable part, the plant 
world, and not merely because it is the most easy of 



42 



THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 



comprehension, but for many other reasons, amongst 
which the most weighty may be that it affords exact, 
living and repeated material for observation, and 
because the school child can live this knowledge in the 
most delightful manner in the school garden. Among 
all the objects of nature, the analogy with the spiritual 
life of man can be most beautifully shown in plants. 
But this instruction, given in the spirit of Liiben, is 
scarcely to be thought of in a public school without the 
accompaniment of the garden. It is not natural history 
alone that is exemplified by this mode of instruction ; 
geography and geology, numbers, language, may all be 
collaterally taught, a rich nourishment for mind and 
heart. 

The school garden will then, as has been shown, fol- 
low up the instruction in natural science in a prominent 
manner. First for purposes of the special instruction 
in purely empirical relations with definite practical ends, 
and aiming also at universal logical considerations, 
while it holds up to correct thinking ; but it will also 
serve the purposes of education, while it gives to the 
child's feelings a truly ethical (or moral) and a healthy 
aesthetic direction, and cultivates a sense of beauty 
which, when a grown man, he will be conscious of 
through his whole life, and manifest in his thinking and 
acting. 

A CITY NECESSITY. 

The conviction will be impressed upon the attentive 
reader that the village school can scarcely take adequate 
care of the education of the people in the spirit of the 
nineteenth century without the addition of the school 
garden. But the city school, where it is possible, must 
also have its school garden, if it is only a few square 



IlSr THE CITY. 



43 



meters in circumference ; and, if in the worst case, it 
can only offer to tlie children in the most modest man- 
ner the opportunity of observing the organism of the 
development and natural history of plants by means of 
quite a few well-chosen examples. 

Even in the city, the school garden need not be in 
any sense a peculiar botanical garden or teach any 
novelties. Its aims should be not instruction in botany, 
but in the characteristic plants of the home ; to intro- 
duce the children not to the science of nature, but to 
nature itself. And its object should be not merely to 
bring the plant world near to the children, or to impart 
directly the knowledge of natural history, but to take 
advantage of those cultivating and educating moments 
for the welfare and healing of the rising generation 
which lie in the province of a knowledge of natural his- 
tory, and which, alas, are not recognized or improved 
by all teachers, by which insensibility this instruction is 
often aimless. The goal of the city school garden with 
reference to education is the same in its nature as that 
of the country ; and, even if individual aims of instruc- 
tion fail, in their places others step forward, not less 
important in their kind for the city child. 

THE CITY AND COUNTRY SCHOOL CONTRASTED. 

City and country school gardens cannot possibly be 
arranged on one inflexible plan, any more than the 
readers or curriculums of the school can be alike. The 
country school garden may be expected especially to 
awaken in the children their first taste for horticulture 
and for the beautiful in nature, and give an oppor- 
tunity to individuals to gain a knowledge of fruit- 



44 



THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 



culture, vegetable and flower raising, according as 
sex, skill and inclination attract to the one or the 
other. It is not desirable, therefore, that all should 
learn every thing, which perhaps would not be prac- 
ticable, and might interfere with the special lessons 
of the school. And the agricultural " experiment gar- 
den," within the school garden, will be of advantage in 
its whole significance only to those boys who will enjoy 
the progressive course of agricultural instruction after 
they have done with the public school. This kind of 
instruction is already partly obligatory, and it will soon 
be so where it is not so now. 

The city school garden contains different material of 
culture from the country school garden. Here espe- 
cially, roomy, airy, shaded play and gymnastic grounds 
will compensate the city children for the want of home 
gardens, and preserve the young from dangerous 
sedentary pleasures, as well as from the perilous amuse- 
ments of the streets. Then it will teach them to know 
the principal trees, shrubs, field, commercial and other- 
wise characteristic plants of the home region in the 
spirit of Liiben, without systematic science. This is the 
least that can be required of either country or city 
school gardens ; but if each of them offers this minimum, 
the task of the school garden is essentially fulfilled, and 
so much is attainable to-day in the city school garden. 
A somewhat later time will perhaps make the school 
garden the school of work everywhere, as soon as the 
teachers are capable of doing it. 

As to the rest, it is not to be overlooked that practi- 
cally the selection of the elements necessary to the 
school garden is, first, a place for it, and secondly, the 
means of the given community. 



EXHIBITING NATURE. 4^ 



NATURE BETTER THAN PICTURES. 

It must not be supposed that a park in the near 
neighborhood of a city, or a public garden, can render 
a school garden unnecessary or take the place of it. 
Such places may suffice for the teachers ; but only per- 
sonally for purposes of their own culture, not for that of 
their pupils. Whoever will learn to swim must go into 
the water, and whoever wishes to know nature must go 
into nature. If the school wish to teach of natural bod- 
ies it must exhibit them, produce them on the spot, and 
produce them often, and if they are changeable bodies, 
like plants, they must be observed in their various de- 
velopments. Nature is better than all the picture 
books ! It is pitiful to think that many cultivated peo- 
ple in cities do not know even our most common forest 
trees, whose number does not reach thirty; that many 
city people do not even know how to distinguish the dif- 
ferent kinds of grain in the fields ; do not even know 
that the leaf and flower buds upon trees and bushes 
are already formed in the autumn, and wrapped in 
the safe integuments with which nature invests them 
for preservation against the winter cold. 

Excursions for the purpose of learning natural history 
are very desirable for the city schools, but these are 
very impracticable in large cities, and would not be suf- 
ficient alone to teach any thing more than the most 
superficial acquaintance with it. 

A school garden in the city fills the hearts of the 
children, even of those who can only see it out of 
the windows, with transport, and makes them fre- 
quent it so much the more willingly. One need but see 
what joy they have in only a few trees in front of the 



46 THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 

school-house or standing in the yard, or when the walls 
of the yard or the gymnastic ground are ornamented 
with perennial green, or with shrubs in the corners, 
or when large flower pots filled with blooming plants 
stand around on pyramidal flower stands. So in Vienna 
the city pedagogium is ornamented with a little terrace 
on the roof, containing a little iron house with a stove in 
it for the winter. A still smaller space in some broad 
passage-way or in another light room in the school- 
house may be appropriated to this priceless purpose. 
How much better, when a real, rational, suitable school- 
garden is arranged for the city child ! Every tree in the 
city is a quiet watch over its health, a source of oxygen, 
an ornament, a refreshment. The time will at last 
come, when, as in Italy, every city will have its Com- 
mittee of Improvement, whose task it shall be, after 
the example of many cities of North America, England 
and France, to beautify the squares and streets with 
rows and groups of trees wherever it does not interrupt 
traffic. Whoever has once learnt in the school garden 
to love trees, will ever after feel it to be an imperative 
want to plant and to beautify. 

WHAT ONE CITY CAN DO. 

Already an area of seventy square metres is offered for 
a city school garden in Vienna. Since there will be no 
room for woody growths here, they have been raised in 
flower pots (according to Prof. Eichert's plan), by a 
private citizen or a society (the Horticultural Society), 
in time to be loaned to the school. Our park and forest 
trees found room on a table at the Exposition, and the 
children had an opportunity to learn to know quite dis- 



CITY GARDENS. " ^y 



tinctly the bark, flower, leaf and tiny buds. In even 
so small a garden the flowers blooming in each month 
could be collected in groups. Of course the spring 
flowers of the home region and the characteristic plants 
of the plain must find careful nurture, even in the very 
smallest school garden. A happy collection of the most 
characteristic home plants can form a little jewel box 
of a garden. So in an alpine region, the most charm- 
ing alpine plants placed together in an artistic rock- 
work in natural groups, make a true feast for the eye of 
old and young. A tasteful collection of living mosses 
for autumn is a never to be forgotten delight to behold. 
When the garden attains the size of 200 square metres, 
the woody growths may be collected together in family 
pictures. If there is more room still, the plan accom- 
panying this pamphlet can be used essentially for the 
laying out of a city school garden. This plan has al- 
ready been used for a most interesting garden that has 
been arranged by Mr. C. Kunze, in Chemnitz, Saxony. 
It is 11,000 metres in size; the ground stock cost 
19,000 thalers ; the whole garden 36,000. This crea- 
tion is for the gymnasium and object school, but it 
serves at the same time as a botanical garden for the 
public. The gentleman who planned this garden is 
such a lover of his kind, that he contemplates making 
still another. 

A GARDEN IN SAXONY. 

In this garden are to be seen statues, a large rockery 
for the alpine plants, a pond which furnishes the pupils 
with marsh and water plants, a building which serves as 
a lecture hall, from whose platform the whole garden 



48 THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 

can be seen, a sensible as well as ornamental dwelling- 
house for the gardener, a sumptuous iron veranda for 
climbing plants, etc., etc. I do not of course desire so 
costly and magnificent a garden for a city school. It 
is not to be expected that it will be imitated in all 
Europe. It would have too much material for a public 
school, and would be superfluous as a public school 
garden. 

The question involuntarily arises : Is the school gar- 
den practicable in any very large city like Vienna or 
Berlin ? 

School gardens are specially desirable precisely here 
where the children find it most difficult, or indeed not 
possible, to wander about in the open air with compan- 
ions of their own age. 

OTHER SCHOOL GARDENS. 

As long ago as before the World Exposition in Vien- 
na, an interesting experiment was made to create some- 
thing equivalent to a school garden. The Director 
Godai of the industrial school in the city pedagogium, 
arranged the most important home plants in flower-pots 
and boxes. 

But since the exposition, already two proper school 
gardens have been established in Vienna, one of which 
was made by altering another garden ; the other was 
created anew. 

That hitherto neglected square was altered which is 
situated in the neighborhood of the Deaf-Mute Institu- 
tion. In the garden which now occupies this waste 
place is now a large gymnastic ground, a well arranged 
garden containing the most important garden and field 



SPECIAL INSTANCES. 49 

plants, a tree and vine nursery, a collection of the most 
important home shrubs, poisonous plants, etc. The 
class of children for whom this garden is destined 
need a peculiar care of the sentiments, and it is gener- 
ally acknowledged the care of plants helps their devel- 
opment very much. 

A very useful garden is that of Principal Katschinka, 
in the 5 th district of Margarethen — laid out at his own 
expense. The present garden was in 1874 on a grass 
plat. Upon the sod had stood from an early time one 
great tree and one sumptuous elderberry bush. All 
the rest was created by Mr. Katschinka. The area of 
the garden is a modest one — only about 560 square 
metres — and it contains about 300 kinds of plants, which 
is a proof that the ground is well used. The most im- 
portant domestic plants, flowers and forest growths are 
well represented, so that the children receive instruction 
from rich material for observation. 

The establishment of school gardens in Vienna is 
possible in many places, for. several squares can be ob- 
tained for modest little gardens. There are few schools 
in Vienna that cannot have gardens of at least from 
five to six square metres in extent. Wonderful as it 
may sound, it must be said that in this very small space 
there can be a very pretty little garden. 

I have been met with the objection that, even where 
space for a garden could be found in Vienna, it would 
be impracticable to have one on account of the multi- 
tude of earwigs and wood lice. This difficulty is not 
of importance. Hard coal ashes used as manure will 
abolish these pests. 

The Common Council of Vienna has referred the 
question of the establishment of school gardens in the 

4 



so 



THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 



public and burger schools of the city to a special com- 
mittee, by which all necessary measures will be taken, 
and all preliminary questions settled before the 28th of 
August, 1875, in order to lay out the first school gardens 
for the various kinds of school-houses. This is a fine, 
happy beginning. 

WHAT TO DO IN SMALL TOWNS. 

In the smaller cities, where there is no space in the 
direct neighborhood of the school-houses, places must 
be obtained by cession or purchase. 

The way will be well opened for future school gardens 
when in all the recitation-rooms pots of leaf plants and 
flowers will be found, which do well in moist rooms in- 
habited by many people, and when all the windows of 
the school-houses, so far as they do not too much im- 
pede the sunshine, are adorned with flowering plants. 
Cords, or, still better, fine wires must be used to fasten 
up the flower pots safely. Children will be glad to 
bring plants from home, to exchange them again for 
others when they are out of bloom, and carry home in 
the autumn what must be kept there through the 
winter. 

It is not difficult to take the idea, if one is once con- 
vinced of the necessity of school gardens, that a school 
garden for girls must be arranged differently in some 
respects from one made for boys. Forest trees can 
be grown in both if there is room for them ; but flowers 
and vegetables should play a chief part in the girls' 
gardens, and the culture of chamber plants should not 
be neglected. Both boys and girls should learn what 
belongs in a pleasant home garden \ the boys should 



A QUESTION. 



SI 



learn to know the wild shrubs and all the important 
technical and commercial plants, and how to plant and 
improve trees and take care of trellis fruit. 

Let every one answer for himself the question : Will 
not the habitual frequenting of the city children in the 
school gardens, and where it is practicable, their occu- 
pation in them, in light garden work, tend to create a 
physically powerful race of men ? 



CHAPTER III. 

THE SCHOOL GARDEN BELONGS TO EVERY EDUCATIONAL 
INSTITUTION, AND TO BE ADAPTED TO SPECIAL WANTS. 

Many friends of schools will perhaps consider it very 
difficult, indeed quite impossible, to carry into effect the 
ideas thus far developed for the realization of a beauti- 
ful and theoretically incontestable ideal, and will look 
upon it as a mere pious wish. And this for two rea- 
sons. First, because they think the teachers are not to 
be found who possess the exalted- gifts of the teaching 
required for it, and also because the communities would 
not be likely to have the means, or the insight, or at 
least the spirit of self-sacrifice to carry out and support 
such school gardens. 

Neither of these things is to be feared. In regard 
to the teachers, it is not asked of them that they shall 
be learned men, or at least so exceedingly learned as to 
be able to know and determine every plant, every ani- 
mal, or every mineral at sight. There are no such 
teachers, and they are not necessary. Indeed they 
would not be desirable, since they would have no pleas- 
ure in teaching any thing but natural history. But the 
requisition that every teacher should know something 
(52) 



THE NEW IDEA DAWNING. ^3 

of nature, that every country school teacher should be 
something of a naturalist, is not a new one ; it has long 
been expressed by naturalists and pedagogues ; it was 
the well known judgment of Diesterweg. But as the 
State has in its hands the teachers' seminaries, it is its 
business to see that the teachers shall be accomplished 
in this direction. It emphatically belongs to every 
teachers' seminary to have a carefully planned, richly 
endowed school garden. Austria has already set the 
example showing that such a garden can be established 
at the cost of a few thousand florins. 

The idea of the school garden has now dawned upon 
the modern state, as is visible in its legislation. The Aus- 
trian public school law of May 14th, 1869, by which her 
legislation has set up a monument for itself of immortal 
thought, but one not yet sufficiently estimated, says in 
Section 63 only this : " In every school a gymnastic 
ground, a garden for the teacher according to the cir- 
cumstances of the community, and a place for the pur- 
poses of agricultural experiment are to be created." 
Still more significantly and specially were given in the 
law the instructions for school inspectors of each circle : 
" To see to it that in the country schools, school gardens 
shall be provided, for corresponding agricultural in- 
struction in all that relates to the soil, and that the 
teacher shall make himself skilful in such instruction." 
Besides this, the school law requires of the teacher the 
ability to give instruction in agriculture, and the Aus- 
trian ordinance upon schools declares expressly in Sec- 
tion 56 : " Instruction in natural history is indispensa- 
ble to suitably established school gardens. The teachers 
then must be in a condition to conduct them." 



^4 THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 



GOOD TEACHERS NECESSARY. 

It must not be denied that a great portion of the 
teachers of the present day are not fitted to conduct 
school gardens ably. As little can it be denied, that in 
individual cases, communities or private individuals 
have bestowed grounds for school gardens which have 
been afterwards turned into cabbage and potato fields 
for their own use. Even the laying out of the school 
garden cannot be left to the teacher, for it belongs to 
an expert to do that, who may have to act decidedly 
against a selfish teacher. On the other hand, the pri- 
vate garden of the teacher, which perhaps constitutes 
part of his lawful income, must not be taken from him 
to make a school garden. At least, in such a case full 
compensation must be made to him. In short, there 
are teachers, where it would least be expected, who 
would have the selfishness to appropriate to themselves 
the proceeds of the more modern methods of instruction 
in natural science, and who yet are too lazy and too 
great lovers of their ease to look even 07ice into a neigh- 
boring school garden. But there are enthusiastic and 
thoughtful teachers who stand in contrast to these mer- 
cenaries, and who honor the name of teacher of the 
public. 

It would be very unjust to accuse the communities, 
particularly the German ones, of a want of understand- 
ing of the importance of a school garden ; yet we find 
ourselves obliged to influence the people by suitable 
essays and good circulars, and by the spreading of 
model plans. An interesting example of the interest 
of many country communities is shown by the market- 
town of Hainfeld in Lower Austria, which worked out 



THE EXPENSE. 



55 



the programme for the school garden laid out there in 
a manner worthy of imitation. Even Slavic peasants 
can be warmed up if the right man undertakes to do it. 
The circle of Mielec in West Galicia, fourteen square 
miles in extent (a German mile is three English miles, 
so this would be forty-two of our square miles), is think- 
ing of laying out school gardens for each of its thirty- 
five schools ; and the village of Zlotniki and Chrzastow, 
besides the little city of Mielec, have already estab- 
lished very extensive ones of a landscape character. 

THE QUESTION OF EXPENSE. 

The expense of these schemes is by no means so 
large as one at a distance imagines, as soon as a suita- 
ble, not too small territory, is to be had. The work 
upon the land is often done by the citizens who offer 
their services for handling and digging without price ; 
and the more readily, because the first work is best 
done late in the autumn when the farmers have free 
time to give to it. Larger outlays grow in time by the 
purchase of fruit trees, which, it is well known, soon 
give compound interest. Almost all the trees, shrubs, 
flowers and seeds are acquired without expense from 
the gifts and exchanges of school gardens themselves. 
Large landed proprietors, gardeners, foresters, lovers 
of nature, and public spirited societies are ready and 
pleased to forward such a public work by their gifts. 
The royal imperial district chief, Eugen Beueszek, in 
Mielec, understands all about stirring up enthusiasm 
for schools. The communities there are erecting nu- 
merous new school houses, precisely according to the 
Austrian model school in the Exposition ; large landed 



56 



THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 



proprietors are giving large domains for school gar- 
dens, and the wood for fencing them in, in very taste- 
ful patterns, besides plants, small trees, etc. The 
peasants carry away the bad soil of a school garden, 
and bring the good earth and work industriously in the 
laying out. I am in possession of a whole list of de- 
mands for school gardens in this district ; from noble- 
men, advocates, clergymen, teachers, etc. I was occu- 
pied for several years in the work of the City park at 
Olmutz, and not only from compatriots, but from stran- 
gers at a great distance, who were unknown to me per- 
sonally, and who did not know the plans, did I receive 
the most varied assistance. One need only hammer 
away at such things to succeed at last. 

Engineers, architects, gardeners of large gardens, and 
other cultivated men, willingly draw up a plan if they 
are asked, and have become interested in the cause. 
According to my experience thus far, many an able man 
in every community which expresses the wish is ready 
to sketch out a garden plan, as soon as one lays before 
him an outline of the territory with a few strokes, and 
gives him a description of the place and its surround- 
ings. The space to be taken for the garden offers no 
special difficulties. Every reader of this essay must see 
for himself that in most cases the school garden, like the 
coat in the hands of the tailor, must be cut according 
to the cloth. 

The community must, of course, bear the expense 
both of laying out and supporting the school gardens ; 
but they will soon bring money to the region, and the 
teacher whose home garden is quite separated from the 
school proper, and who has the greatest trouble about 
it, soon receives half of the net income. The amount 



THE REQUISITES. r>j 



flowing into the parish box serves for its maintenance 
and improvement, and for providing materials of teach- 
ing, and other school purposes. 

REQUISITES FOR A GARDEN. 

The question now arises, What are all the requisites 
of a good school garden ? 

One demand is, deeply dug, well arranged and sanded 
paths, which shall always be kept clear and in good 
condition by the children of the upper classes. A 
school garden which would comprise every thing desir- 
able (that is, such a garden as should be appended to 
an institution for the training of teachers) should con- 
tain 

1. A selection of the characteristic plants of the plain 
and meadow, mountain and wood of the given country. 

2. All home evergreen and foliage trees j at least one 
sample of each, and all the more important wood- 
shrubs. 

3. A seed nursery for fruit, a nursery for the improve- 
ment of wild stock and quinces, a collection of berry 
fruit and a nursery for them, plantations of precious 
fruit trees, and especially of dwarf fruit trees, and where 
possible a trellis for wall fruit and grape vines. 

4. An agricultural " experiment garden " of several 
square metres — that is, an agricultural botanic garden 
proportioned to the circumstances of the place. A 
small but very complete " experiment garden " was rep- 
resented in the school garden at the Austrian Exposi- 
tion, and gave much pleasure. In the school garden of 
a teachers' seminary there should be small beds also 
for the experimental work of individual pupils. 



58 



THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 



5. In the borders around the " experiment garden " 
there should be a collection of economical and techni- 
cal plants of the home region ; stalk fruit, hoe fruit, le- 
guminous plants, and fodder plants, as far as they do 
not belong in the " experiment garden ; " also aromatic, 
medicinal, and commercial plants of all kinds. 

6. A collection of the chief poisonous plants of the 
home region. 

7. A little kitchen garden with hot-bed or leaf-bed 
and beds for planting out. The leaf-beds are made in 
boxes and covered with glass, and are good both for 
raising seeds and planting slips. They can be used in 
a window or over an oven or stove, and are made of 
red clay, which absorbs warmth from the sun even if the 
glass cover is shaded. 

8. In small beds, or singly, flowers, high-bush roses, 
ornamental shrubs and perennials. 

9. A beehive in a distant part of the garden. 

10. A small plantation of mulberry trees and 
bushes (in southern regions) ; and, where it is practi- 
cable, a large water basin A fountain belongs to every 
school. 

Since the school has patriotic aims — that is, to build 
up an army ready for defence and capable of enthusiasm, 
there should be a gymnastic ground in the neighborhood 
of the school-house. If this can be within the school 
garden, it has, like the covered gymnastic hall, found 
its most beautiful and appropriate location. 

EXPENSE AND FEASIBILITY. 

A school garden which contains all these requisites 
does not need an extravagant outlay in order to contain 



EXPENSE AND FEASIBILITY, 



59 



about three hundred kinds of plants for the purpose of 
instruction and education. 

A school garden worthy of the name is practicable 
on mountain or in valley, on high or low ground, on good 
or bad soil, near water or remote from water, protected 
by a neighboring wood or where neither wood, meadow 
nor tree is at hand. But it must adapt itself to any 
kind of territory, and be of regular or irregular shape, 
according to circumstances. To be practicable, it must, 
above all things, conform to circumstances, as well in ref- 
erence to its shape — which last if not picturesque can 
easil)^ be masked with shrubbery — as to the practical 
aims it pursues in reference to naturalizing new, and per- 
fecting already existing branches of industry. 

But no one must think that one school garden, in or- 
der to work practically, must contain all the advantages 
that have been enumerated. Such gardens would only 
be exceptions ; they would be expensive, since they 
would require the outlay of much money and the ser- 
vices of a specific gardener. In short, they would not 
be necessary, since the various conditions can and must 
be essentially distributed in the city and country school 
gardens. 

The given circumstances and the counsel of compe- 
tent persons must first determine which of these requisi- 
tions are pressingly necessary in a given place, which 
are very desirable, which are most desirable ; not only 
what is not immediately necessary but what is impracti- 
cable ; in fact, whatever element has been overlooked in 
this sketch. Above all things, let the largest possible 
area be given to the school garden, so that its already 
imagined future improvement may at a later time meet 
with no difficulties. 



6o THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 

DIFFERENT KINDS OF GARDENS. 

The different kinds of school gardens may be desig- 
ated as : i. The country school garden. 2. The school 
garden for small cities. 3. The school garden for large 
cities. The country school garden, and the large city 
school garden, may be taken as the two poles. 

FURTHER PARTICULARS. 

In the country school garden, the central point is 
constituted by the " experiment garden for boys," and 
the kitchen garden and nursery, which divide the terri- 
tory into two nearly equal parts. The borders which 
encompass the beds can be planted alternately with 
dwarf fruit trees, between which — in the kitchen garden — 
strawberries and medicinal plants ; and in the " experi- 
ment garden," economical and commercial plants will 
find their place. Where the woods are very near, forest 
trees and bushes need not take up the room in the 
garden. 

The large country school garden requires the beauty 
of landscape gardening. In Galizia, through the in- 
fluence of the author, school gardens have a park-like 
character, and only the garden land proper is limited 
by straight lines. But in small school gardens, the 
ground must be used as far as possible for agricultural 
purposes. The paths in small school gardens will 
therefore be narrow and straight. The more valuable 
fruit trees cannot be in great numbers ; and wall fruit 
and grape vines must be left out, as these do not belong 
to the first and essential instruction of the garden. If 
the garden is small, the beehive must be dispensed 
with; but in the background of all school gardens a 



DIFFERENT KINDS OF GARDENS. 6 1 

place must be reserved for compost and other materials, 
and a forcing-bed should be found in the kitchen 
garden. 

In the school garden of the large city, the " experi- 
ment garden " must be dispensed with. The kitchen 
garden will only be given to the girls, perhaps, and the 
nursery must be contained in the very smallest limits, 
or left out altogether. But all important types of the 
home flora should be there ; forest trees and shrubs, 
economical, commercial, medicinal plants, annuals, per- 
ennials, spring flowers, and plants of the plain. No 
one will wish for a beehive here. But the gymnastic 
and playground must be in or near the garden. The 
garden work and movement in the fresh air are, in a 
sanitary point of view, inestimable to city children. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ITS SOCIAL AND CLIMATIC INFLUENCE. 

The first point of view, in which the rural population 
should recommend the acceptance of the school garden, 
is the elevation it will effect in the condition of the 
people. How a hundred useful incentives can be given 
in it, to the future husbandman, has been repeatedly- 
pointed out in this little work. 

If the State, the committees, the useful unions, or 
patriotic men, wish to naturalize and nationalize a new 
calling which is connected with husbandry, with resi- 
dence in the country, and chiefly with mother nature, 
then will the teachers, the men, the school, be exclu- 
sively, or, at least specially, in favor of the school 
garden and a place for it. In the school garden, and 
by means of it, an abundance of new and practical 
thoughts will be diffused among the people ; for, in the 
capability of perfection of the school garden (no mo- 
ment being left out of sight), lie the seeds of new dis- 
coveries and inventions which are to be made by 
teachers, by compatriots, by the friends of schools and 
of nature. He who has been happy for eight years of 



ITS SOCIAL INFLUENCE. (,^ 

his childhood in a rational school garden will be thank- 
ful all his life for this paradise of his first years ; and 
will be earnest to contribute his own mite to the con- 
stant perfecting of an institution that has become so 
dear to him. How much will this further the elevation 
and nursing of the schools ! Wherever a good idea has 
been born or carried into practice in the school garden, 
it will become immediately common property ; for the 
knowledge of it will spread quickly. A good garden 
will soon have a good reputation, and will be visited by 
the neighboring parishes. The ambition of the outlying 
ones will have a praiseworthy zeal and keep watch of it. 
The teachers, on their side, will always, in numerous 
circles and country conferences, spread the new thought, 
and be eager to imitate that which appears no longer as 
a mere theory, but as a beautiful idea whose practica- 
bility one else might doubt, or esteem too costly ; whose 
advantages the individual could otherwise scarcely 
measure. In the school garden an opportunity is of- 
fered to place in the hands of the children improved 
English and American tools, and to domesticate these 
among the whole people to their great advantage. 
That the public school garden must essentially further, 
directly or indirectly, the husbandry of the country, 
needs no farther exemplification. Where field culture 
is changed into garden culture, in the place of one har- 
vest there will be three or four harvests ; the value of 
the revenue and the value of real estate will stand in 
corresponding relation. 

FURTHER ADVANTAGES. 

In the first place, a rural population, well instructed 
in the school garden, will be capable of carr}dng on the 



64 THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 

occupation of husbandry in a rational manner. A 
revolution is taking place in the field of husbandry in 
our day not less striking than in that of national science, 
industry, and technics ; and has not the school a direct 
duty to prepare the future husbandsman for his calling? 

The time is past in which it could be thought that 
the husbandman can carry on his work with no other 
aid than raw experience. Without the knowledge of 
natural history, or without a general good amount of 
culture and knowledge, the husbandman is lost, at a 
period of transition from a method that has been out- 
lived to one regulated upon firm scientific principles. 
The husbandman needs to be prepared for his indus- 
try as carefully as one who wishes to carry on any com- 
monly called city industry. Should he complain if he 
lets his little piece of ground lie fallow after, as well as 
before tilling it ; if he lets his cow go hungry half the 
winter — chases it from the willow grove in the summer 
heat, and does not save its dung till after it has become 
worthless ? Not the times nor the accident of another 
branch of industry is to be complained of, but his own 
ignorance and want of understanding. 

Agricultural unions, popular writings, essays scattered 
broadcast, model economies, etc., perform only half 
their task if their theoretic instruction and the exhibi- 
tion of the object for practical inspection, and the 
demonstration of the way in which it is to be applied, 
do not follow directly. And this can be done most 
ably, most quickly, and most naturally in the school 
garden, which in certain circumstances — for instance in 
a poor mountain region, where an agricultural school is 
impossible in the neighborhood (although just here it 
would help a most pressing need). The school garden 



SOME RESULTS. 



6S 



will work even more blessedly than an inferior agricul- 
tural school, which in a more favored region the expert 
of modern times would cast aside. 

SOME CONSEQUENCES. 

Old ways of husbandry must be changed in many 
points. In the first place, " the culture of corn must 
shrink in extent but rise in revenue ; that is, there must 
in future be more of it, and of better quality, though in 
a smaller area. For that end it must be cultivated in 
a cheaper manner, that the net proceeds may be higher 
and the ground harvest richer." Every husbandman 
who reckons well will understand this necessity. In 
the second place, the requisition of the present time on 
the husbandman proclaims that " in the place of the 
wheat culture that used to be so imperative, an increased 
culture of fodder must step in. The breeding of cattle 
must be improved. The manure must be much more 
rich and abundant." In the third place, " the demand 
requires the culture of commercial plants wherever it is 
possible." In the fourth place, modern times demand 
of the husbandman that he mingle some other occupa- 
tion with his agricultural one (something that has a 
relation to agriculture), in case he fails in his care of 
his cattle and farm. 

A highly important part of the school garden is the 
cultivation of the agricultural " experiment field " en- 
joined by the Austrian school law. The pressure of the 
population upon the means of subsistence in England 
and Saxony, in the last twenty years, makes it impera- 
tive that the same land shall yield at least double the 
amount it has hitherto yielded. But societies of all 
kinds, unions, writings, essays, expositions, premiums, 

S 



66 THE SCHOOL GARDEN: 

< _ 

schools of industry, itinerant teachers and lecturers, 
will all come too late if the public school does not give 
a stimulus to rational improvement in agriculture to 
the childrefi. 

Glorious words has Settegast uttered upon this sub- 
ject : " It cultivates the whole man who must stand in 
noble self-reliance, that his activity may extend over 
wide circles those threads of influence with which the 
welfare of the whole people is interwoven. The clods 
of the homestead cultivated by him offer a stronghold 
which is proof against the dark powers of poverty and 
immorality. In the consciousness of wishing and offer- 
ing something worthy rests the highest joy of the hus- 
bandman. Out of this consciousness he draws the ideal 
contemplation of his calling." Such natures, with such 
practical, moral and manly views of life, must be formed 
by the school garden in increasing numbers. 

Is a wide-spread proof necessary to show that even 
the future craftsman, like that city child who frequents 
no other school than the public school, will gain a 
hundred incitements directly or indirectly for his fu- 
ture calling from the school garden ? It has been 
shown plainly that the greatest part of the instruction 
in natural science has a natural connection with the 
school garden, but that only through the limiting and 
concentrating of the material, can that be made fruitful 
which otherwise it would be better to cast out of the 
public school as mere rubbish. 

BEAUTIFYING THE LAND. 

The second point of view which must recommend 
the general spread of school gardens is the beautifying 
of the land, which will unquestionably be among their 



AN EMPEROR'S IDEA. 67 

first fruits. Beautiful lands are made still more charming 
and are more sought when well cultivated ; lands that 
are not by nature beautiful become more desirable for 
their own citizens, more attractive to strangers, when 
beautified by the hand of man. The necessity of plant- 
ing and improving is excited and increased by the cul- 
ture of imagination in the child. The sense of beauty, 
planted in a whole people, is an inestimable capital. 

The meritorious idea of founding societies for the 
beautifying of the land can only be practicable when 
the children in the schools are won to the beauty of 
nature. A rural people that has grown up in school 
gardens will no longer suffer the disfigurement of offal 
in the streets of a village.* 

The Emperor Joseph II. 's idea of planting streets 
and squares with trees is at last, one hundred years 
after his death, likely to be realized. How beautiful 
the villages will be thus ornamented, and what money 
will flow in good years into the village treasuries ! 
When the village streets, squares and lanes are enlivened 
by the beauty of fruit trees, the church-yards will be 
planted for sanitary and beautifying purposes ! 

The village streets which are to contain trees must 
of necessity be broad ; but many walls and fences, many 
railings and hedges in villages can be covered and orna- 
mented with grape vines and trellis fruit, which will 
take up little room, and bring in much money. 

ITS SOCIAL AND CLIMATIC INFLUENCES. 

Austria should be ashamed of the fact that many coun- 

* I spare the minute description, and am happy to recognize the fact that no 
such villages exist in any part of America with which I am acquainted, but they 
are apparently worse in Austria th'an in Germany, where no American can fail to 
be shocked at the spectacles he frequently meets with. — Tr. 



68 THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 

tries that lie farther north have roads and lanes planted 
with trees, while fertile plains in many regions here, 
where valuable fruit could easily be cultivated, are 
totally bare. 

Soon the beautifying hand of man will work over 
home, garden and village. Railroad tracks, as in Bel- 
gium, will be rich sources of revenue by the cultivation 
of their borders. Many empty bits of land, and bare 
mountain slopes or marshy places planted with bushes 
and trees, will lend another physiognomy to the region. 
The environs of villages will be planted in many places 
with fruit trees, and where this is not advisable, with 
forest trees and shrubs ; and many hitherto unprofit- 
able and rude landscapes be transmuted into pleasing 
and profitable ones. All the by-ways in villages, fields 
and turnpikes will be furnished with trees or shrubs. 
Living hedges will surround numerous fields, ridges 
and dams ; the borders of brooks and the edges of 
ponds will be ornamented with the green of fruit trees, 
or with forest trees and shrubs. In the cities, trees 
will stand before the churches, around the fountains, 
upon the sides of the most frequented streets and 
squares. There will be promenades where they are not 
now thought of. And, where the expense is feared, 
people will be astonished at the liberality of the lovers 
of man and nature who will furnish the required mate- 
rial, the taste being once excited. 

To the most beautiful fruits of school gardens be- 
longs the improvement that will take place in home 
gardens. Models of these should be seen in all school 
gardens where their is sufficient space. Not only for 
their usefulness but for recreation is a home garden 
invaluable for a proprietor and his family. When 



IN THE CITIES. 



69 



children are capable of taking part in it, by their train- 
ing in the school garden, this value will be doubled. 
Now they are too often shut out from a participation 
with us in its pleasures because the luxury is so expensive 
a one that it must be guarded from injury. But when 
it is chiefly the children's work, what an added tie it 
will be to home ! — Tr.] Plans for home gardens should 
be given to the children in school, where there is not 
space for actual model gardens, and societies for the 
beautifying of the land should draw up these plans for 
the school gardens. It is chiefly the teachers who issue 
from the teachers' seminaries upon whom will devolve 
the pleasant duty of modelling, improving and extending 
the home garden ; and with them will be found the 
treasury of beautiful plans. 

EFFECT IN CITIES. 

How much more beautiful will life in the cities be, 
when the possessors of great dwelling houses can give 
their inmates the enjoyment of a home garden, or at 
least of a grass-plot ornamented with flowers and shrubs ! 
And how deeply will it be engraved in the hearts of the 
rural population when the peasants' gardens, one of the 
most immemorial forms of cultivation, will be again a 
common source of enjoyment in places that do not pos- 
sess it to-day ! In a polyglot kingdom, offering such 
manifold stages of material and spiritual culture as the 
Austro-Hungarian monarchy, one has an opportunity to 
find types of a national home garden stamped by the 
whole people. But most home gardens of most nations, 
both Slavic and Roman* form a striking contrast to the 
ideal attainable under the various given conditions in 
modern times. They bear the inherited impress of 



yo THE SCHOOL GARDE AT. 

hundreds of years, and only the school — that is the 
school garden — can bring about a general and thorough- 
going change. 

A third point of view which should lead school boards 
to promote the spread of school gardens, is the neces- 
sity of combating our degenerated meteorological and 
climatic conditions. The fearful consequences of the 
increasing devastation and rooting out of woodlands, 
as well as the reckless drying up of ponds and marshes, 
increase from year to year in a frightful measure. In 
the first place stands the withdrawal of water from 
our springs and flowing rivers. Then comes the weeks 
and months of alternate, persistent, devastating droughts, 
and equally destructive rainfalls. 

WHY TREES SHOULD BE PLANTED. 

If Schmall's theories of the world-wide fluctuations 
of the surface of seas are correct ; and if the scarcity 
of water is increasing in the whole northern hemisphere 
in consequence of an inexorable law of nature, this 
fact must spur us on with double force to combat the 
deficiency of water that threatens us with ruin. It is 
not to be overlooked, that the impoverishment of Spain, 
Sicily, Greece, the Kars (a domain just north of Trieste), 
Turkey, Egypt, Mexico, and even of some islands, is 
due to this destruction of forests in those countries. 

In late years even Austria has brought to mind in a 
staggering manner that this evil must be met quickly, 
and with comprehensive measures, if ruin is not to en- 
sue, and if many a landscape is not to be obliterated 
in the course of a few years. * For instance, in a part 
of middle and eastern Bohemia. The means of redress 
are not difficult to find. They consist, apart from the 



RESTORATION OF WOODS. 



71 



sparing and nursing of the still standing and new woods, 
in the vigorous planting of trees on a large scale in the 
whole land, — indeed in every land. Trees must be 
planted not only in the streets, where they are for the 
most part found now, but on lanes, on ridges and hil- 
locks, and on dams. What room the railroad dams oc- 
cupy ! Also, around all springs of water, on the shores of 
all brooks, on the edges of all ponds, on bare moun- 
tain slopes and in all waste places. Street and village 
lanes and house gardens must be increased in number 
for this purpose, and should be well planted. This can- 
not be effected by one effort ; and our country popula- 
tion must be gained over to this idea, and be convicted 
of their indolence. 

The preliminary condition of improvement is the sys- 
tematic foundation of school gardens in the whole land. 
Even the artificially planted woods, with their ditches 
to carry off the superfluous water, can never give again 
to a country that abundance of moisture which, in former 
times, the original forests distributed far and wide. 
Still less can large plantations of fruit trees make up 
for the woods of past times. But, in co-operation with 
other plantings, they will combat the increasing drought 
in many countries ; and those drying winds which now 
blow in so many regions over the bare fields and open 
cultivated plains, to the great injury of the growth of 
plants, and which carry off from the ground the ammo- 
niacal contents which are necessary to plant life, to- 
gether with the indispensable moisture, will finally be 
arrested. With the restoration of the woods, the air 
and earth will again attain the necessary moisture ; the 
extremes of the differences of temperature between day 
and night will diminish; luxurious orchards will no 



72 



THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 



longer dry up and be frost-bitten in summer, and the 
produce of the fields will not prove abortive on fruitful 
land, — since the woods, as a medium between earth and 
air, regulate all climatic extremes. 

HEALTH CONSIDERATIONS, ETC. 

It is not to be overlooked, at the same time, that not 
only must the land become richer and more beautiful, 
but also more healthy, when the hand of man produces 
such extensive sources of oxygen and purifiers of the 
air. 

All the points of view here enumerated — the promo- 
tion of the welfare of the people, the beautifying of the 
land, the combating of our meteorological conditions, 
etc. — will often in realization be connected with greater 
objects. This may be shown by an example which will 
directly illustrate the part that may be played by school 
gardens in the neighborhood of a great city. 

Vienna lies in the midst of a beautiful country on the 
spurs of the most beautiful mountain chain on the earth. 
The landscape around Vienna can by no means be 
called a poor one ; but if you compare the environs of 
Vienna with those of Paris, an astonishingly great dif- 
ference may be seen. Paris lies bedded in a garland of 
gardens ; and the agriculture in the neighborhood of the 
capital understands how to use all the means of modern 
science in glorious measure, and to convert the refuse 
of that world city into a rich blessing of cultivation. 
Vienna exhibits before its gates many an example of a 
perverted agriculture, in its fallow land. The cultiva- 
tion of vegetables in the neighborhood of Vienna is 
hardly carried on at all. Scarcely any thing but the com- 
monest kinds of fruit trees are cultivated ; pod fruits in 



A FINANCIAL MISFORTUNE. 73 

very small quantities. The prices of flour and fruit are 
often shameful ; and so are the prices of other products 
of the vegetable kingdom. But these high prices for 
very ordinary goods do not usually profit the producer, 
but only help the greedy or covetous middlemen. Vi- 
enna spends yearly as much as 300,000 florins for the 
cleaning of the sewers. The fecal matters of the me- 
tropolis are wasted in the most grievous manner — for 
they are conducted into the channel of the Danube. 
It is a financial misfortune, and certainly no honor, 
that Vienna was not long ago, like the Italian and 
French cities, surrounded on all sides by vegetable gar- 
dens, fruit gardens and pleasure gardens. The environs 
of Vienna ought to be so transformed in a wide circuit, 
in an agricultural point of view, that a whole zone could 
be cultivated with vegetables, another zone be covered 
with leguminous plants, and still other zones be divided 
between the growth and culture of large fruits and grape 
vines — and of strawberries grown in the open air, which 
bring so much revenue to many a Thuringian locality. 
Of flowers and fancy plants, of ornamental shrubs, etc., 
the same may be said. These zones should be arranged 
and established by the Royal Imperial Society of Agri- 
culture- All this is practicable as soon as water is 
brought into the city; but who can believe that this 
complete revolution can take place in the domain of 
agriculture, in the environs of Vienna, if the rising gen- 
eration does not receive the requisite incitements at the 
school age, and in good school gardens ,'* 

North of Vienna, on the other side of the Danube, 
stretches the " Marchfeld," an ugly strip of land of a 
decided steppe character, passing here and there 
through swamps. Its nearness to Vienna, which needs 



74 



THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 



to be provided with the means of subsistence, should 
spur the inhabitants of this plain to change their ter- 
ritory into a plenitude of gardens. In some parts the 
ground is good ; in other places the cherries have 
scorned all endeavors to draw them out of the fruit 
trees. 

The engineer, O. V. Altvatoer, has worked out a plan 
of a comprehensive State irrigation, and Baron Pirquet 
has already proved, by an astonishing example, what 
can be accomplished in this unpropitious region by ra- 
tional irrigation and superposition of manure dissolved 
in water. Who could deny that all such efforts would 
be guided and furthered by prudent activity in the 
school gardens ? 

THE MORAL STIMULUS. 

The best laws remain inoperative, the best counsels 
are preached to deaf ears, if, in tender youth, sense and 
understanding are not enlisted for wholesome innova- 
tions. Above all things, we can make youth happy if 
we give him an opportunity to do garden work. The 
author knows of a military school whose pupils made a 
neat little garden, in the great yard, without any special 
guidance. In all other lands to-day the soldier is still 
feared by the possessors of large open territory. In 
France, on the contrary, simple soldiers create charming 
plantations in tents. There are plenty of barracks in 
which, without interfering with military purposes, they 
can be permitted to have little plantations along the 
walls. The army is called the school of men, and not 
without justice. Why shall not the soldier, who cir- 
culates very much round the world, be the pioneer of so 
important a thought, which he can put in practice in his 



THE MAN OF DEEDS. 7^ 

distant mountain village ? He must be especially the 
man of deeds. He is called upon like every other 
citizen to keep sacred the arts of peace. But higher 
than all else stands the enhanced morality of the peo- 
ple, which can^be so well inculcated through the school 
garden. 

CLOSING WORDS OF DR. SCHWAB. 

I am conscious of having found, in the idea devel- 
oped in these pages, nothing that is new. I have per- 
haps only given expression to what many others feel 
darkly, to what still others recognize clearly ; and, 
indeed, what others have partially expressed before me 
— if not in this connection, or with the same sharpness, 
a thought which is floating as it were in the air, I have 
attempted to write as cheap a treatise as possible 
about my view of the subject, as to what a rational 
school garden might be able to offer, and what it really 
will oifer. My design is to stimulate to the creation of 
school gardens fitted to time and place. That the idea 
here expressed does not possess all the perfection of 
which it can be imagined capable, is clear to me. I 
hope, therefore, that other men who are superior to me 
in endowment, knowledge and experience, may seize 
upon the idea, improve it and develop it ; but, above 
all things, may they help to turn the thought into acts ! 

In Austria, unquestionably, the new school law will 
be brought into the closest connection with the regen- 
eration of the fatherland. A new spirit will penetrate 
the public school, and inaugurate a new time. 

Already fresh life is infused into the domain of in- 
struction in theory and practice. City and country, 
every community, the whole world of teachers, every 



76 THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 

cultivated family, every individual thinking mind, busies 
itself at present with the first of all the questions of life 
— the Empire State. Six years have passed since the 
promulgation of the excellent law, and already a quiet 
and noiseless, but so much the more persistent process 
of revolution in public instruction penetrates into the 
depths of the life of the people. Already we can say 
that, according to the understanding, the zeal, the self- 
sacrifice with which every individual as well as every 
community accompanies this revolution and takes a 
working interest in it, can the degree of culture, and 
the morals of the individual and the community be 
judged. 

The erection, preservation and care of the public 
school is the first consideration of the local authority. 
It is at present the most important problem of that local 
authority ; upon its worthy solution depends the whole 
future of that authority's welfare. 

Among all the arrangements of the State, the school 
takes the front place ; for the school is the nursery of 
the intelligence, the moralit}^, the industry, the national- 
ity, the justice, the power and the genuine love of the 
fatherland. That the timely foundation of school gar- 
dens, in city and country, will help essentially to fur- 
ther the task of public education, should be clear to 
every reader of this little pamphlet. Good school gar- 
dens will also be sources of health, of spiritual refine- 
ment and cheerfulness to the teacher ; they will make 
it easier to him to teach simply, freshly, lovingly, prac- 
tically, to educate youth fiaturally, and to make him 
acquainted with individualities. They will solve the 
questions in natural history surely and quietly because 
founded upon the love of work, and therefore upon one 



CLOSING WORDS. 



n 



of the roots of human activity. The school garden al- 
lows itself to be incorporated into every city and coun- 
try school without disturbing the corporate organism of 
the instruction. It makes the task of the school not 
more difficult, but easier; it is possible almost every- 
where even if under limitations. That law and pre- 
scription cannot enforce a real execution of this mate- 
rial of teaching and education — that almost everything 
depends upon the insight and the understanding of the 
school constituency, is certainly not to be denied. Just 
as the school-houses of to-day are built differently from 
those of former times ; as school furniture, means of 
instruction, methods^ plans, object of teaching, and what- 
ever else belongs to the school, have changed — so the 
gardens that here and there have belonged to schools 
must be changed, if they are to meet the demands of 
modern times. 

OPINIONS SOLICITED. 

In conclusion*, all teachers and friends of schools, 
and of mankind, are requested to let the author have 
the benefit of all their experiences about school gar- 
dens. We want their opposing views as well as their 
propositions for improvement ; and their new thoughts, 
in the interest of the cause, either in the form of letters 
or through the press. Every critical remark, even to 
the demolition of the ideas expressed here, will be re- 
ceived gratefully. All the friends of schools are re- 
quested to give information to the author of the laying 
out of new school gardens ; and, if possible, to send 
him a sketch of any such. 

And now, teachers, physicians, clergymen, school in- 
spectors, surveyors, parish committees, senators, unions 



78 



THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 



and societies, friends of youth and of the people, what- 
ever officers or potentates there may be — take unto 
yourselves the idea of the school garden, and introduce 
it into active life ! 

The school garden is secured a good future on Aus- 
trian ground. The Austrian people, with its warm re- 
ceptivity of every thing good, its keen sense of beauty, 
and its matchless capacity for self-sacrifice in every 
thing that concerns the schools, will vie with Sweden in 
the field of the school garden. 

A time will come when it will be difficult to under- 
stand how, for centuries hitherto, public school instruc- 
tion and educational institutions have been able to exist 
without school gardens, so simple and obvious is the 
idea — but that time will not come of itself. Hundreds 
and hundreds of actively benevolent men must put their 
hands to the work for the furthering of this ideal con- 
ception — which must be connected with the whole ful- 
ness of life, in order powerfully to further the advance 
of the people in both the material and spiritual spheres. 



CHAPTER V. 

PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS BY MRS. HORACE MANN. 

Dr. Schwab's little work has been given entire, with 
the exception of a few paragraphs. Perhaps more that 
is chiefly of local interest might have been left out, if it 
had not been for the danger of marring the unity and 
the earnest flow of the style. As the work of making 
school gardens is eminently a practical one, I proceed 
to give suggestions as to what can be done with us at 
once about them. 

It is a singular fact that, while many of our towns 
have committees for improvement, and the practice of 
setting out trees is very general in the streets of our 
country towns, and even suburban cities, the school- 
yards are bare of every attraction ! Nothing gives a 
stronger impression of the " abomination of desolation " 
than to enter one of them. But they are generally wide 
enough to admit of a wdde border that can be adorned 
with the wild-flowers of the neighborhood, which Mr. 
William Falconer, in the Rural New Yorker of March 
30th and April 6th, 1878, assures us grow well when 
transplanted from the woods to good garden mold. As 

(79) 



8o THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 

few will probably take the trouble to send for these ar- 
ticles to the Rural New Yorker, so much of them as 
will contribute to the work of the adornment of our 
school gardens will be given here. 

OUR WILD FLOWERS. 

It may not be known that several hundred plants 
bloom in the fields in May, as many others in June, as 
many more in July, half as many more in August, and 
a few in September. Some of our amateur botanists 
have lovingly watched and recorded the birthday — that 
is, the flowering day of all these plants. From such a 
list we select the prettiest, and those easiest of cultiva- 
tion for the school garden. Mr. Falconer's love of his 
science has gone so far as to induce him to divide them 
by their colors, as if he knew school gardens were to be 
the next things to be made in this busy world. He has 
also preserved the familiar names, which are prettier 
for children to know than the botanical ones. The kin- 
dergarden, and primary school children at least, can 
wait till the days of systematic botany come into their 
curriculum, before learning the Latin words that are so 
meaningless to them. The chief reason for putting 
these wild flowers into the school gardens, is, that they 
begin to bloom in April, and run through May and 
June, while the annuals cannot be sown in our cold cli- 
mate with any certainty of success until June, and many 
do not bloom until July. No less than forty wild flow- 
ers of all colors bloom in April and May, — bloodroot, 
anemones, violets, trilliums, dandelions, buttercups, 
marigolds, uvularia, dog-tooth violets, hawthorns, co- 
lumbines, ladies' slippers, geranium, Dutchman's 
breeches, wake-robin, wild-rose, queen of the prairie, 



OBJECT OF INTEREST. gl 

spirea, wild verbena, Solomon's seal. The children can 
look for them on their very birthdays, and thus add two 
months to the pleasures of their gardens. 

WHAT CHILDREN LOVE. 

It is well to know that many plants, roses, honey- 
suckles, etc., will go on blooming almost double the 
time, if the withered flowers are immediately cut off. 
Children in a school garden will like nothing better than 
to use the scissors for that purpose. The small experi- 
ence gained in kindergardens that have a garden (these 
are very few, alas !) is sufficient to prove how children 
love the work, and how they carry the love of it away 
from the kindergarden ; and what personages plants be- 
come to them, as favorite kittens and dogs do who be- 
come part of a family circle. One little fellow whose 
parents had a magnificent garden, asked the kinder- 
garden teacher, when she visited the family, to go with 
him to his home garden. He did not take any notice 
of the splendid flowers that dazzled her eyes as she fol- 
lowed him. At last they came to the spot. The object 
of interest to the little boy was — a potato vine, on which 
a few blossoms had appeared. The teacher had ad- 
vised the children, who had home gardens, to plant each 
a potato, and watch it. She had no garden in the kin- 
dergarden, except in flower-pots in the window, where 
each had planted a few peas. These peas were well 
watched and tended ; and actually bore, not only flowers, 
but a pod or two, which pods were duly gathered and 
taken home to be boiled. Another little boy of five, 
worked an hour or two to dig up and pot a geranium 
that he feared the frost would spoil in the garden border, 
and lugged it up to the house with great difficulty. Even 

6 



$2 THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 

in the flower-pots of the kindergarden the turnip can be 
planted or brought to seed, and the children can be 
shown, by planting rice or other seeds upon damp cotton 
in a glass tumbler or other dish, the very process of 
daily growth ; also that plants can be grown not only 
from seeds but by slips — and that these must be kept 
out of the sun, and always moist, until they are rooted. 
The first new leaf that proves success gives an exquis- 
ite pleasure to a child (and not only to a child but to a 
veteran). The thought, too, that man can help God 
beautify the earth by preparing the ground properly at 
a certain place, and keeping all the requisite conditions, 
may be implanted early in the young soul, which can be 
shown so many analogies between itself and nature's 
processes, in the visible world. The very word kinder- 
garden is a mine of thought. 

" What are the flowers of the kindergarden ? These 
plants that you see are the flowers of the sun," said a 
kindergarden teacher one day. " The children," was 
the immediate answer all round. Upon this text what 
cannot be said ? The whole process of growth in good- 
ness, with the love of God for its sunshine, can be 
shown in the daily life of the little kindergarden family ; 
and those who really know children by observation and 
study, know that they can take ideas and reproduce 
them in their own words. 

SOME FURTHER HINTS. 

The expense of putting a border six feet wide around 
a school yard ninety-six feet square, is about fifty dol- 
lars. This involves digging out the sand and putting 
in the mould. The rest of the adornment can be done 
by the children of the school. A grass-plot opposite 



SUGGESTIONS. 83 



the door to be shaded in time with trees, is a very de- 
sirable adjunct to this border as given in the accom- 
panying plan. It will be delightful to the children to 
have a seat on the grass-plot, where they can eat their 
lunch at recess, and rest occasionally from their light 
garden work. An hour a day, including recess, can be 
given to this work under the superintendence of the 
teacher ; and soon, doubtless, the children will visit it 
and work in it out of school hours, especially those who 
reside near. A day or an afternoon set apart occasion- 
ally for visiting the woods in search of plants will soon 
fill the borders, and annuals can be planted at pleasure. 
Trees in the corners of the yard and vines over the 
walls, will make it a charming field of labor for the 
pupils ; and we will venture to predict that if the 
teachers make the most of such beginnings, it will not 
be long before larger domains are provided, and com- 
plete school gardens created here as in Austria. No 
one can read Dr. Schwab's treatise without feeling con- 
vinced of the utility of this plan both for instruction 
and happiness. Some persons have suggested that van- 
dalism will destroy such gardens ; but I think better of 
human nature. I would not venture yet to cultivate 
fruits. We must wait for this till school gardens are 
protected by the authorities, or till the cultivated tastes 
of the people do the work. But the cultivation of flow- 
ers and flowering shrubs will subdue the temptations of 
appetite, which we know poor human nature cannot re- 
sist. Under paternal governments, like that of Austria, 
it is easy to make sudden changes of this sort ; but 
where, as in our country, every thing waits for the im- 
provement of public opinion, we must be content to 
wait for fruit trees in school gardens. 



84 THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 

ABOUT. 

Every one knows that there is danger of the total 
rooting out of wild flowers, and ferns, in the vicinity 
of most of our cities, and even towns. To perpetuate 
and improve them in gardens is quite a new idea, 
and worthy of being cherished. Let us try it, and no 
longer be dependent upon seeds that bid us farewell 
when they are put into the ground, as most of our pur- 
chased seeds do. Those who have hoped for better 
things from the distribution of seeds from the patent 
office have been doomed to specially bitter disappoint- 
ments, as the writer can testify, whose hope is well-nigh 
immortal, and who has tried them for nearly sixty years ! 
Even the lawn-seed, that the seed-men assure us to be 
good, sometimes comes up — chickweed ! A few hardy 
things come up, perhaps — perhaps not. They more 
frequently disappoint hope. 

A bright farmer is reported in the New York Tribune 
to test his seeds by fitting and covering a dinner-plate 
with fine flannel, keeping it wet, and laying his fine 
seeds upon it. All that are genuine will throw up white 
shoots ; and he thus judges how much waste he is to 
allow for in planting. It is well said that the best way 
to get good seeds is to raise them. Dr. Schwab speaks 
of seed-nurseries as one of the indispensable things in a 
school garden that is not too cramped in size. The 
seed should be gathered from the main stocks of the 
plants, rather than from laterals. In gardens that are 
merely ornamental, plants are not allowed to go to 
seed, because the process of ripening injures the comeli- 
ness of the plant j and, where the plant is perennial, 
that is to be considered, and many annuals are very 



CATS AND DOGS. 85 



unsightly in the ripening season ; but a seed-nursery 
obviates these objections. 

ABOUT CATS, ETC 

In soil that is half peat, wild flowers from the woods 
thrive, if well cared for. Violets and hepaticas, hous- 
tonia and meadow pink grow very large, and the violets 
will give lovely blossoms in October as well as in 
spring. It seems as if the light of some eyes made 
flowers grow, but they must be enlightened eyes that 
see what is to be done, or that find out from the 
heart that is behind the eyes, and which loves the flow- 
ers. Anthracite coal and gas are the arch enemies of 
house-plants. All sorts of worms must be watched for 
in the garden, and toads and birds cherished and 
attracted. Cats must be decidedly abolished. Cats 
not only drive away birds but scratch up garden bor- 
ders. It is striking to see how soon birds will return 
to a garden when several cats have been shot. Kittens 
are charming as long as their mothers nurse them ; but 
when the latter lose their love for them, and begin to 
cuff them and turn them upon the cold world for sub- 
sistence, look out for the birds ! If kittens are begun 
with early, and judiciously trained, however, they will 
bring in the birds unharmed, and lay them at your feet, 
and will gradually learn not to touch them. Such kittens 
may be allowed to turn into cats. Dogs are dangerous 
in gardens — particularly if any squirrels linger in the 
neighborhood, as they do a long time near country resi- 
dences. 

WHITE FLOWERS OF SPRING. 

Wood anemona, anemonae nemorosa, April, May; 
creeping fleabane, erigeron flagellare. May ;• sharp lobed 



S6 THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 

liverwort, hepatica acutiloba, May; Solomon's seal, 
polygonatum giganteum, May, June ; bloodroot, san- 
guinaria canadensis, April, May ; rue anemone, thalic- 
trum anemonoides. May ; white violet, viola rotundifo- 
lia, May ; star flower, trientalis Americana, May ; large 
flowered birthroot, trillium giganteum. May ; dwarf 
birthrpot ; trillium novale, April ; snow - drop tree, 
helesia teltraptria, mountain cinquefoil, potentilla tri- 
dentata, June. 

WHITE FLOWERS OF SUMMER. 

Large white wake-robin, trillium grandiflorum, 
June ; Pennsylvania anemone, anemona Pennsylvanica, 
June ; spreading dogbane, apocynum androsae-mefolium, 
June ; dwarf cornel, cornel canadensis, June ; lady's 
slipper, cypripedium candidum. May, June ; ragged 
fringed orchis, habenaria lacera, July ; grass of Parnas- 
sus, Parnassia caroliniana, July ; false Solomon's seal, 
smilacina bifolia. May, June ; white pond lily, nym- 
phoea odorata, June ; water arum, calla palustrina, 
June J arrow head ; wax-work, or climbing bittersweet, 
celastius scandeus, June ; spiderwort, tradescantia, 
virginica, June. 

WHITE FLOWERS OF AUTUMN. 

White aster, aster trandescantia, July, August ; white 
snakeroot, eupatorium ageratoides, July, August ; hairy 
alum root, heuchera villosa, August, September ; hibis- 
cus, hibiscus Californicus, August ; hibiscus, hibiscus 
militaris, August j boltonea, boltonia glastifolia, Sep- 
tember, October ; white pond lily, nymphae odorata, 
June, September ; pearly everlasting, antennaria mar- 



BLUE FLOWERS. 



87 



garitacea, August ; sweet pepperbush, clethra alnifolia, 
July ; plantain-leaved everlasting, antennaria plantagin- 
ifolie, August. 

BLUE FLOWERS OF SPRING. 

Pasque flowers, anemone patens, var, nutalliaria, 
April ; clover leaf, hepatica triloba, April ; bluets, hous- 
tonia coerulea, April ; crested iris, iris cristata, May ; 
spring iris, iris verna, April ; Jacob's ladder, polemo- 
nium reptans, May ; violet wood sorrel, oxalis violacea, 
May ; common blue violet, viola cucullata, April, June ; 
larkspur-leaved violet, viola delphinifolia, April ; hand- 
leaf violet, viola palmata ; arrowhead violet, viola 
sagittata, April ; robin's plantain, erigoron bellidifolium, 
May. 

BLUE FLOWERS OF SUMMER. 

Slender blue flag, iris virginica, June ; large blue 
flag, iris versicolar. May, June ; perennial flax, linum 
virginianum, June, August ; many-leaved lupine, lupi- 
nus perennis, June ; prairie clover, petalostemon viola- 
ceus, July ; western spiderwort, tradescantia pilosa, 
June, September ; common spiderwort, tradescantia vir- 
ginica. May, August ; succory or chicory, cichora inty- 
bus, July, October ; blue-eyed grass, sibyrinchium bermu- 
diana, June, August. 

BLUE FLOWERS OF AUTUMN. 

Tall larkspur, delphinium exaltatum, July ; robin's 
plantain, erigoron belledifolium, fringed gentian, gen- 
tiana crinita, September; monkshood, aconitum uncin- 
atum, June, August ; harebell, campanula rotundifolia, 
July ; blue asters, aster azurens, curtisii, shortii, July ; 



88 THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 

mist flower, concaclinium cceruleum, September ; dwarf 
larkspur, delphinium tricorne, July ; great blue lobelia, 
lobelia syphilitica, August, September. 

YELLOW FLOWERS OF SPRING. 

Dandelion, taraxecum dens leonis, April, September ; 
golden fumitory, corydalis glaucea. May ; celandine 
poppy, stylophonum diphyllum, May ; celandine, chelido- 
nium. May, August ; common yellow violet, viola cana- 
densis, May ; downy-leaved violet, viola pubescens, 
May ; round-leaved violet, viola rotundifolia, May \ 
marsh marigold, caltha palustris, April, May; five- 
finger cinquefoil, potentilla canadensis, April, July ; 
vent, corydalis aurea, April, July; early crowfoot or 
buttercup, ranunculus fascicularis. May ; bellwort, uvu- 
larea perfoliata and sessilifolia. May ; bulbosis, May, 
July ; golden club, orontium aquaticum, May ; yellow 
adder's tongue or dog-tooth violet, erythronium Ameri- 
canum. May. 

YELLOW AND ORANGE FLOWERS OF SUMMER. 

Rocky Mountain yellow columbine, aquilegia chrysan- 
tha, yellow-fringed orchis, habenaria ciliaria, great 
flowered St. John's wort, hypericum perforatum, June, 
September ; Canada lily, liliiim Canadense, June, July ; 
loosestrife, lysimachia lanceolata, June, August ; even- 
ing primrose, Oenothera bientiis, June ; bellwort, uvul- 
aria grandiflora, June ; silver weed, potentilla anserina, 
June, September ; star of Bethlehem, ornithagulum 
umbellatum, June ; St. John's wort, hypericum perfora- 
tum, June. 

5 



SPRING FLOWERS. 89 

YELLOW FLOWERS FOR AUTUMN. 

Giant sunflower, helicanthus giganteus, May ; corn- 
flower, rudbeckia hirta, June, August ; golden rod, solid- 
ago, many species, August, October ; five-finger, poten- 
tilla canadensis, April, July ; wild senna, cassia mari- 
landica, July ; golden fumitory, corydalis aurea, April, 
July ; monkey flower, mimulus ringens, July, Septem- 
ber ; common yellow violet, viola canadensis. May, 
August ; dwarf dandelion, leontodon autumnale, July, 
August ; butterfly weed, asclepias tuberosa, July, Sep- 
tember ; tickweed, coreopsis rosea, July. 

RED AND PURPLE FLOWERS OF SPRING. 

Rhodora canadensis, May ; pale laurel, kalmia glauca, 
May, June ; arethusa bulbosa. May ; sheep's laurel, 
kalmia angustifolia. May, June ; pink laurel, kalmia 
latifolia. May, June; Canadian columbine, aquilegia 
canadensis. May; spring beauty, claytonia virginica; 
purple lady's slipper, cypripedium acaule. May ; shoot- 
ing star, dodecatheon meadia, May, June; Dutch- 
man's breeches, dicentra eximia. May, August ; spot- 
ted cranesbill, geranium maculatum. May; water or 
purple avens, geum nivale. May ; ground or moss 
pink, phlox subulata, April, May; anemone cylin- 
drica, phlox reptans. May, June; three-leaved night 
shade, triiium erectum, May ; wake-robin, trillium cer- 
nuum. May, June ; painted trillium, trillium erythrocar- 
pum. May, June ; early wild rose, rosa blanda. May, 
June ; hawthorne, cratcegus oxyacanthus. May ; scarlet- 
fruited thorn, cratcegus coccinea, May ; purple violets, 
viola cucullata, palmata, sagettata, pedata, bicolor, can- 
ina, stricta, canadensis, May, August ; black thorn, cra- 
tcegus tomentosa. May, June ; pink, silene Pennsylva- 



90 



THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 



nica, May; Maryland pinkroot, spigelia Marilandica, 
June ; May flower, epigea repens, May ; queen of the 
prairie, spiroea lobata, June ; fringed orchis, habenaria 
fimbriata, June ; Alpine azalea, loiselauria procumbens, 
June 'y orange-red lily, lilium Philadelphicum, June ; 
Turk's cap lily, lilium superbum ; wild bergamot,monarda 
fistula, July, September ; Oswego tea, monarda didyma, 
July, August ; meadow beauty, rhexia virginica ; loose- 
strife, lythrum hyssopifolia ; spiked loosestrife, lythrum 
salicaria ; climbing or prairie rose, rosa setigera, June, 
July ; swamp rose, rosa Carolina, June, September ; 
dwarf wild rose, rosa lucida. May, July ; sweet brier 
rose, rosa rubiginosa, June, August ; small sweet brier 
rose, rosa micrantha ; andromeda, andromeda ligustruna, 
June, July ; catchfly, silene inflata, June ; catchfly si- 
lene Pennsylvanica, June ; sleepy catchfly, silene antir- 
rhena, June, September; azalea nudiflora, April, May; 
azalea viscosa, June, July ; rosebay, rhododendron max- 
imum, July ; wintergreen, pyrola elliptica, June ; pyrola 
chlorantha, June, July ; one-flowered pyrola, moneses 
uniflora, June. 

RED AND PURPLE FLOWERS OF AUTUMN. 

New England aster, aster Novae Angleae ; violet-blue 
aster, aster spectabulis, September, November ; green 
aster, aster loevigatus ; hairy-leaved aster, cordifoleus ; 
pale-purple aster, miser ; clear-blue aster, amethystimus ; 
annual aster, linifolinis ; swamp rose mallow, hibiscus 
moschentos ; blazing star, liatris punctata ; cardinal 
flower, lobelia cardinalis ; hardback, spiraea tomentosa, 
July; spiroea salicifolia, July; blue vervain, verbana 
hastata, July, September ; verbena aubletia, July ; ver- 
bena virginiana, June, August. 



CLIMBING PLANTS, FERNS,r gj 

RED AND PURPLE FLOWERS OF SUMMER. 

Red columbine, aquilegia truncata, ram's-head lady's 
slipper, cypripedium arietinum. 

CLIMBING PLANTS. 

Wistaria, May ; trumpet creeper, tecoma radicans, 
July ; wild balsam apple, echinocystis lobata, July, Oc- 
tober \ common greenbriar, smilax rotundifolia, June, 
July ; Virgin's bower, dematis virginiana, July, August ; 
bignonia capreolata, April ; man-of-the-earth creeper, 
ipomea pandurata, June, August ; trumpet honeysuckle, 
lonicera sempervirens, May^ October ; yellow honey- 
suckle, lonicera parviflora, May, June ; climbing wax- 
work or bittersweet, celastrus scandens, June. 

FERNS. 

I?\ a moist, shady, nook in gardens with peaty soil. 
Maiden's hair, adiantium, pedatum, July ; asplenium 
ebeneum, asplenium tricnomanes, July ; asplenium ruta 
muraria, July ; asplenium thelypteroides, July ; lady 
fern, asplenium felix foemina, July ; aspidium achrosti- 
coides, July ; aspidium marginale, July ; aspidium fra- 
grans ; aspidium cristatum, July ; aspidium spinulosum, 
July ; aspidium goldianum, July, September ; walking 
fern, camptosurus rhyzophyllus, July j cystopteris bul- 
bifera, cystopteris fragilis, Dicksonia punctilobula, July ; 
climbing fern, lygodium palmatun, July ; sensitive fern, 
onoclea sensibilis, July ; cinnamon fern, osmunda cim- 
monomea, May; osmunda ciaytoniana. May, fruits as 
it unfolds ; royal fern, osmunda regalis ; woodsia ilvan- 
sis, June ; woodsia obtusa, July ; woodwardia virginica, 
August. 

Where there is room for forest trees, the most com- 



92 



THE SCHOOL GARDEN: 



petent judges, Mr. George B. Emerson, Boston ; Mr. C. 
F. Sargent, director of Harvard Botanic Garden ; Dr. 
James C. Brown, of London, England ; Mr. Robert 
Douglas, of Illinois ; Mr. Budd, of Iowa (see Dr. B. G. 
Northrop's Economic Tree Planting), recommend the 
following, either from seed or from saplings. 

TREES RECOMMENDED. 

Larch trees for durability, strength and resistance to 
water. This tree is good for railway sleepers, as it holds 
iron longer than any other wood, and does not corrode 
it like oak. It attains maturity before the oak. Ten 
acres of larch will furnish as much ship timber as 
seventy-five acres of oak, because it can be planted 
more closely. But the wood loses its hardness in rich 
Western loam, or in too rich ground anywhere. 

The white ash is hardy, a rapid grower, and will bear 
the bleakest exposures. It must have good soil j but 
it gives excellent wood for furniture and farm utensils. 
The seed is abundant, and ripens about the first of Oc- 
tober. If sown in the fall they should be covered with 
three feet of straw ; if in the spring the seed must be 
mixed with damp sand. Green bushes will protect the 
seed in the hottest of summer weather. 

MAPLES. 

The rock maple grows perfectly in clayey soil. Nor- 
way maple or sycamore, stands against Northern blasts 
and sea-breezes. 

Red maple thrives in dry and gravelly soils. 

Maples should be planted twenty-five feet apart. 
Elms should be planted from forty to fifty feet apart. 
White oak, chestnut, hickory, butternut, white-pine and 
willows will flourish in New England. 



A CATALOGUE OF BOOKS 



PUBLISHED AJSTD FOB SALB BY 



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Any one of which will he sent hij mail, post-paid, on receipt of the price. 

"Eating for Strength." 

BY 

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INCLUDINO 

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100 *' "• Delicious Drinks. 
100 Ever recurring questions answered. 



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Parturition Without Pain; 

OR, 

A Code of Directions for Avoiding most of the 
Pains and Dangers of Child- Bearing. 

EDITED BY M, L. HOLBROOK, M.D., 

Editor of The Herald of Health, 



"WITH .A.IS' ESSA.Y OUT 

*^ The C AiiE OF Cn:i3L.r>K,E]v, *' 

By Mrs. Clemence S. Lozier, M.D., 
Dean of the JVew- "^ork Medical College for Women* 



1. Healthfulness of Child-Bearing. 

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Address WOOD & HOLBROOK, Pablisliers, 

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